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SLIPPY McGEE
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1-H
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THE NSW YOtK
PUBLIC LiBFAB'i
341933A
ASTOR, LENOX AN O
TILDBN FOUNDATION^
R 1027 L
Copyright, 1917, by
The Centuey Co.
Published, April, 1917.
Reprinted, August, 1917; February, 191S:
August, 1918: March, 1919; August, 1919$
November, 1919 ; February, 1929 $
June, 1920 ; September, 1920 ;
January, 1921.
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37X4 45
TO
ELIZABETH add ALAN OBMLEB
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FOREWORD
2 have known life and lore, I have known death and disaster;
Foregathered with fools, succumbed to sin, been not unac-
quainted with shame;
Doubted, and yet held fast to a faith no doubt could overmaster.
Won and lost : — and I know it was all a part of the Game.
Youth and the dreams of youth, hope, and the triumph of
sorrow:
I took as they came, I played them all; and I trumped the trick
when I could.
And now, 0 Mover of Men, let the end be to-day or to-
morrow —
I have staked and played for Myself, and You and the Game
were good!
/
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I APPLEBORO 3
H THE COMING OF SLIPPY MoGEE . . ... 19
HI NEIGHBORS 37
IV UNDERWINGS 48
V ENTER KERRY 65
VI “THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH
THIS PHILISTINE.” 1 SAM. 17-32 .... 94
VH THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE Ill
VHI THE BUTTERFLY MAN 131
IX NESTS 145
X THE BLUEJAY 172
XI A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP . 189
Xn JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 203
XIII “EACH IN HIS OWN COIN” 226
XIV THE WISHING CURL 258
XV IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT 283
XVI “WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” ... 302
XVII “ — SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” ... 319
XVin ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW ... 343
XIX THE IOUOF SLIPPY MoGEE 364
XX BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 382
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SLIPPY McGEB
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CHARACTERS
Father Armand Jean de Ranc£, Catholic Priest of Applehoro ,
South Carolina
Madame de Ranc£, Ms Mother
Cl&ue, their Servant
Laurence Mayne, the Boy
Mart Virginia Eustis, the Ctrl
James Eustis, Man of the New South
Mrs. Eustis, a Lady
Doctor Walter Westmoreland, the Beloved Physician
Jim Dabney, Editor of the Applehoro “ Clarion P
Major Appleby Cartwright
Miss Sally Ruth D ex t er * Neighbors
Judge Hammond Mayne
George Inglesby, the Boss of Applehoro
J. Howard Hunter, his Private Secretary
Kerry, an Irish Setter
Pitache, the Parish House Dog
The Moths and Butterflies of South Carolina
The Children, the Mill-hands, the Factory Folks, and
Slippy McGee, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man
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♦
SLIPPY McGEE
CHAPTER I
APPLEBORO
* "TOW there was my cousin Eliza,” Miss Sally
Ruth Dexter once said to me, “who was
X ^1 forced to make her home for thirty years
in Vienna! She married an attach^ of the Austrian
legation, you know; met him while she was visiting
in ‘Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he
was such a charming man that they fell in love with
each other and got married. Afterward his family pro-
cured him a very influential post at court, and of course
poor Cousin Eliza had to stay there with him. Dear
mama often said she considered it a most touching
proof of woman’s willingness to sacrifice herself — for
there ’s no doubt it must have been very hard on poor
Cousin Eliza. She was bom and raised right here in
Appleboro, you see.”
Do not think that Miss Sally Ruth was anything but
most transparently sincere in thus sympathizing with
the sad fate of poor Cousin Eliza, who was bora and
raised in Appleboro, South Carolina, and yet sacrificed
herself by dragging out thirty years of exile in the court
circles of Vienna ! Any truebom Appleboron would be
equally sorry for Cousin Eliza for the same reason that
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SLIPPY McGEE
Miss Sally Ruth was. Get yourself born in South Caro-
lina and you will comprehend.
“What did you see in your travels that you liked
most!” I was curious to discover from an estimable
citizen who had spent a summer abroad.
“Why, General Lee’s standin’ statue in the Capitol an’
his recumbent figure in Washington an’ Lee chapel, of
co’se!’’ said the colonel promptly. “An’ listen hyuh.
Father De Ranc4, 1 certainly needed him to take the bad
taste out of my mouth an’ the red out of my eye after
viewin’ Bill Sherman on a brass hawse in New York,
with an angel that ’d lost the grace of God prancin’ on
ahead of him!” He added reflectively: “I had my
own ideah as to where any angel leadin’ him was most
likely headed for!”
“Oh, I meant in Europe!” hastily.
“Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in
Europe, I reckon; likewise New York. But cornin’
home I ran up to Washington an’ Lee to visit the gen-
eral lyin’ there asleep, an’ it just needed one glance to
assure me that the greatest an’ grandest work of art in
this round world was right there before me ! What do
folks want to rush off to foreign parts for, where they
can’t talk plain English an’ a man can’t get a satisfyin’
meal of home cookin’, when we ’ve got the greatest work
of art an’ the best hams ever cured, right in Virginia ?
See America first, I say. Why, suh, I was so glad to
get back to good old Appleboro that I let everybody
else wait until I ’d gone around to the monument an’
looked up at our man standin’ there on top of it, an’
I found myself sayin’ over the names he ’s guardin’
as if I was sayin’ my prayers: our names.
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APPLEBORO
5
“Uh huh, Europe ’s good enough for Europeans an’
the Nawth ’s a God’s plenty good enough for Yankees,
but Appleborb for me. Why, father, they haven’t got
anything like our monument to their names!”
They have n’t. And I should hate to think that any
Confederate living or dead ever even remotely resembled
the gray granite one on our monument. He is a brigand-
ish and bearded person in a foraging cap, leaning for-
ward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat
is buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle
effect in the back, and the solidity of his granite shoes
and the fell rigidity of his granite breeches are such as
make the esthetic shudder; one has to admit that as a
work of art he is almost as bad as the statues cluttering
New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical ;
they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper
vision of the heart. He stands for something that is gone
on the wind and the names he guards are our names.
This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain some-
thing that -is inherent in the living spirit of all South
'Carolina; wherefore it explains my Appleboro, the real
inside-Appleboro.
Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, con-
servative, old Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs
and traditions of their fathers, they would as lief white-
wash what they firmly believe to be the true and natural
-character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as they
"would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody
will give a backyard henhouse a needed coat or two ; but
a front fence t Never! It isn’t the thing. Nobody
does it. All normal South Carolinians come into the
-world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and
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SLIPPY McGEE
they depart hence even as they were bora. In conse-
quence, towns like Appleboro take on the venerable as-
pect of antiquity, peacefully drowsing among immemorial
oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy moss.
Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we
have escaped the clutch of commerce. We have the
usual shops and stores, even an emporium or two, and
street lights until twelve, and the ™i11a and factory.
We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich
territory to fetch and carry what we take and give.
And, except in the poor parish of which I, Armand De
Ranee, am pastor, and some few wealthy families like
the Eustises, Agur’s wise and noble prayer has been in
part granted to us; for if it has not been possible to
remove far from us all vanity and lies, yet we have been
given neither poverty nor riches, and we are fed with
food convenient for us.
In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks
askance at the noisy and intruding New, before which
it is forced to retreat — always without undue or undig-
nified haste, however, and always unpainted and unre-
constructed. It is a town where families live in houses
that have sheltered generations of the same name, using
furniture that was not new when Marion’s men hid in
the swamps and the redcoats overran the country-side.
Almost everybody has a garden, full of old-fashioned
shrubs and flowers, and fine trees. In such a place men
and women grow old serenely and delightfully, and
youth flourishes all the fairer for the rich soil which
has brought it forth.
One has twenty-four hours to the day in a South
Carolina town — plenty of time to live in, so that one
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APPLEBORO
7
can afford to do things unhurriedly and has leisure to
be neighborly. For you do have neighbors here. It
is true that they know all your business and who
and what your grandfather was and wasn’t, and they
we are prone to discuss it with a frankness to make the
lie scalp prickle. But then, you know theirs, too, and you
id are at liberty to employ the same fearsome frankness,
j. provided you do it politely and are not speaking to an
i outsider. It is perfectly permissible for you to say ex-
e. actly what you please about your own people to your
« ' own people, but should an outsider and an alien pre-
e sume to do likewise, the Carolina code admits of but one
1 course of conduct; borrowing the tactics of the goats
> against the wolf, they dqse in shoulder to shoulder and
present to the audacious intruder an unbroken and for-
midable front of horns.
And it is the last place left in all America where de-
i cent poverty is in nowise penalized. You can be poor
pleasantly — a much rarer and far finer art than being
1 old gracefully. Because of this, life in South Carolina
, sometimes retains a simplicity as fine and sincere as it is
charming.
I deplore the necessity, but I will be pardoned if I
pause here to become somewhat personal, to explain who
and what I am and how I came to be a pastor in Apple-
! boro. To explain myself, then, I shall have to go back to
a spring morning long ago, when I was not a poor parish
priest, no, nor ever dreamed of becoming one, but was
young Armand De Ranee, a flower-crowned and sing-
ing pagan, holding up to the morning sun the
chalice of spring; joyous because I was of a perishable
beauty, dazzled because life gave me so muoh, proud of
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SLIPPY McGEE
an old and honored name, secure in ancestral wealth,
loving laughter so much that I looked with the raised
eyebrow and the twisted lip at austerities and prayers.
If ever I reflected at all, it was to consider that I
had nothing to pray for, save that things might ever re-
main as they were: that I should remain me, myself,
young Armand De Ranee, loving and above all beloved
of that one sweet girl whom I loved with all my heart.
Young, wealthy, strong, beautiful, loving, and beloved!
To hold all that, crowded into the hollow of one boyish
hand ! Oh, it was too much !
I do not think I had ever felt my own happiness so
exquisitely as I did upon that day which was to see the
last of it. I was to go a-Maying with her who had
ever been as my own soul, since we were children play-
ing together. So I rode off to her home, an old house
set in its walled inclosure by the river. At the door
somebody met me, calling me by my name. I thought
at first it had been a stranger. , It was her mother. And
while I stood staring at her changed face she took me
by the hand and began to whisper in my ear . . . what
I had to know. Blindly, like one bludgeoned on the
head, I followed her into a darkened room, and saw
what lay there with closed eyes and hair still wet from
the river into which my girl had cast herself.
No, I cannot put into words just what had happened ;
indeed, I never really knew alL There was no public
scandal, only great sorrow. But I died that morning.
The young and happy part of me died, and, only half-
alive I walked about among the living, dragging about
with me the corpse of what had been myself. Crushed
by this horrible burden which none saw but I, I was
APPLEBORO
9
blind to the beauties of earth and deaf to the mercies
of heaven, until a great Voice called me to come out
of the sepulcher of myself; and I came — alive again,
and free, of a strong spirit, but with youth gone from
it. Out of the void of an irremediable disaster God had
called me to His service, chastened and humbled.
“Who is weak and I am not weak t who is offended
and I burn not?”
And yet, although I knew my decision was irrevocable,
I did not find it easy to tell my mother. Then :
“Little mother of my heart,” I blurted, “my career
is decided. I have been called. I am for the Church.”
We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful
room,, and the lace curtains were pushed aside to allow
free ingress of air and sunlight. Between the win-
dows hung two objects my mother most greatly cher-
ished — one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed,
of a man in the flower of his youth. His hair, beauti-
ful as the hair of Absalom, falls about his haughty, high-
bred face, and so magnificently is he clothed that when
I was a child I used to associate him in my mind with
those “captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, aU
of them desirable young men, . . . girdled with a girdle
upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their
heads, aU of them princes to look to” . . . whom
AJiolibah “ doted upon when her eyes saw them por-
trayed upon the walls in vermilion ”
The other is an Audran engraving of that same man
grown old and stripped of beauty and of glory, as the
leaf that falls and the flower that fades. The somber
habit of an order has replaced scarlet and gold; and
sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old
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SLIPPY McGEE
crucifix. For that is Armand De Band, glorious sin-
ner, handsomest, wealthiest, most gifted man of his day
i— and his a day of glorious men; and this is Armand
De Rand, become the sad austere reformer of La
Trappe.
My mother rose, walked over to the AbbS’s pictures,
and looked long and with rather frightened eyes at him.
Perhaps there was something in the similarity to his of
the fate which had come upon me who bore his name,
which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand
De Rand, of a cadet branch of that great house, which
emigrated to the New World when we French were
founding colonies on the banks of the Mississippi.
Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded
me pitifully.
“Oh, no, not that!” I reassured her. “I am at once
too strong and not strong enough for solitude and si-
lence. Surely there is room and work for one who
would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the
open, is there not?”
At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I
am an only son and the name dies with me, the old
name of which she was so beautifully proud ! She had
hoped to see my son wear my father’s name and face
and thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly
loved; she had prayed to see my children about her
knees, and it must have cost her a frightful anguish to
renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these tender
and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and
kissed me on the brow.
Three months later I entered the Church; and be*
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APPLEBORO 11
cause I was the last De Band, and twenty four, and
Hie day was to have been my wedding-day, there fell
upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of sad ro-
mance.
Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into
what I might call a very popular preacher. Though I
myself cannot see that I ever did much actual good,
since my friends praised my sermons for their “fine
Gallic flavor,’’ and I made no enemies.
But there was no rest for my spirit, until the Call
came again, the Call that may not be slighted, and bade
me leave my sheltered place, my pleasant lines, and go
among the poor, to save my own soul alive.
That is why and how the Bishop, my old and dear
friend, after long argument and many protests, at length
yielded and had me transferred from fashionable St.
Jean Baptiste’s to the poverty-stricken missionary parish
of sodden laboring folk in a South Carolina coast-town s
he meant to cure me, the good man ! I should have the
worst at the outset.
“And I hope you understand,’’ said he, sorrowfully,
“that this step practically closes your career. Such a
pity, for you could have gone so far ! You might even
have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too much that
the last De Ranc6, the namesake of the great Abb4, might
have finished as an American cardinal 1 But God’s will
be done. If you must go, you must go.”
I said, respectfully, that I had to go.
“Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost,” said
the Bishop. “And it may be that, if you do not kill
yourself with overwork, you may return to me cured,
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SLIPPY McGEE
when you see the futility of the task you wish to un-
dertake. ’ ’ But I was never again to see his kind face in
this world.
And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely
from all ties, as if to render my decision irrevocable, it
was permitted of Providence that the wheel of my for-
tune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis
of the banking house which bore his name shot himself
through the head one fine morning, and as he had been
my guardian and was still the executor of my father’s
estate, the whole De RancS fortune went down with
him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house
which had sheltered so many of the name these two
hundred years. If I could have grieved for anything it
would have been that. Nothing was left except the
modest private fortune long since secured to my mother
by my father’s affection. It had been a bridal gift, in-
tended to cover her personal expenses^ her charities, and
her pretty whims. Now it was to stand between her and
want.
Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of
all our staff, we turned our backs upon our old life,
our old home, and faced the world anew, in a strange
place where nothing was familiar, and where I who had
begun so differently was destined to grow into what I
have since become — just an old priest, with but small
reputation outside of his few friends and poor work-
ing-folks. There! That is quite enough of mel
There was one pleasant feature of our new home
that rejoiced me for my mother’s sake. Prom the
very first she found neighbors who were friendly and
charming. Now my mother, when we came to Apple*
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APPLEBORO
13
boro, was still a beautiful woman, fair and rosy, with
a profusion of blonde cendre curls just beginning to
whiten, a sweet and arch face, and eyes of clearest hazel,
valanced with jet. She had been perhaps the loveliest
and most beloved woman of that proud and select cir-
cle which is composed of families descended from the
old noblesse, the most exclusive circle of New Orleans
society. And, as she said, nothing could change nor
alter the fact that no matter what happened to us, we
were still De Ranc6s !
“Ah! And was it, then, a De Ranc6 who had the
holy Mother of God painted in a family picture, with
a scroll issuing from her lips addressing him as ‘My
Cousin’!” I asked, slyly.
“If it was, nobody in the world had a better right!”
said she stoutly.
Thus the serene and unquestioning faith of their esti-
mate of themselves in the scheme of things, as evidenced
by these Carolina folk around her, caused Madame De
Ranc6 neither surprise nor amusement. She understood.
She shared many of their prejudices, and she of all
women could appreciate a pride that was almost equal
to her own. When they initiated her into the inevitable
and inescapable Carolina game of Matching Grandfa-
thers, she always had a Roland for their Oliver; and as
they generally came back with an Oliver to match her
Roland, all the players retired with equal honors and
mutual respect. Every door in Appleboro at once
opened wide to Madame De Ranc6. The difference in
religion was obviated by the similarity of Family.
Fortunately, too, the Church and Parish House were
not in the mill district itself, a place shoved aside, full
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SLIPPY McGEE
of sordid hideousness, ribboned with railroad tracks,
squalid with boarding-houses never free from the <
smell of bad cooking, sinister with pawnshops, miserable
with depressingly ugly rows of small houses where the
hands herded, and all of it darkened by the grim shadow
of the great red brick mills themselves. Instead, our
Church sits on a tree-shaded corner in the old town, and
the roomy white-piazza ’d Parish House is next door,
embowered in the pleasantest of all gardens.
That garden reconciled my mother to her exile, for
I am afraid she had regarded Appleboro with some-
what of the attitude of the castaway sailor toward a
desert island — a refuge after shipwreck, but a desert
island nevertheless, a place which cuts off one from one’s
world. And when at first the poor, uncouth, sullen
creatures who were a part of my new charge, fright-
ened and dismayed her, there was always the garden to
fly to for consolation. If she couldn’t plant seeds of
order and cleanliness and , morality and thrift in the
sterile soil of poor folks’ minds, she could always plant
seeds of color and beauty and fragrance in her garden
and be surer of the result. That garden was my delight,
too. I am sure no other equal space ever harbored so
many birds and bees and butterflies; and its scented
dusks was the paradise of moths. Great wonderful fel-
lows clothed in kings’ raiment, little chaps colored like
flowers and seashells and rainbows, there the airy
cohorts of the People of the Sky wheeled and danced and
fluttered. Now my grandfather and my father had
been the friends of Audubon and of Agassiz, and I my-
self had been the correspondent of Riley and Scudder
and Henry Edwards, for I love the People of the Sky
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- APPLEBORO
15
more than all created things. And when I watched them
in my garden, I am sure it was they who lent my heart
their wings to lift it above the misery and overwork
and grief which surrounded me ; I am sure I should have
sunk at times, if God had not sent me my little friends,
the moths and butterflies.
Our grounds join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter’s on one
side and Judge Hammond Mayne’s are just behind us;
so that the Judge’s black Daddy January can court our
yellow C161ie over one fence, with coy and delicate love-
gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato* pone in season;
and Miss Sally Ruth’s roosters and ours can whole-
heartedly pick each other's eyes out through the other
all the year round. These are fowls with so firm a faith
in the Mosaic code of an eye for an eye that when Miss
Sally Ruth has six blind of the right eye we have five
blind of the left. We are at times stung by the Mayne
bees, but freely and bountifully supplied with the Mayne
honey, a product of fine flavor. And our little dog
Pitache made it the serious business of his life to keep
the Mayne cats in what he considered their proper
bounds.
Major Appleby Cartwright, our neighbor to the other
side of Miss Sally Ruth, has a theory that not alone
by our fruits, but by our animals, shall we be known
for what we are. He insists that Pitache wags his tail
and barks in French and considers all cats Protestants,
and that Miss Sally Ruth’s hens are all Presbyterians
at heart, in spite of the fact that her roosters are Mor-
mons. The Major likewise insists that you couldn’t
possibly hope to know the real Judge Hammond Mayne
unless you knew his pet cats. You admire' that calm
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SLIPPY McGEE
and imperturbable dignity, that sphinxlike and yet vigi-
lant poise of bearing which has made Judge Mayne so
notable an ornament of the bench? It is purely feline:
“He caught it from his cats, suh: he caught every God-
blessed bit of it from his cats!”
As one may perceive, we have delicious neighbors !
When we had been settled in Appleboro a little more
than a year, and I had gotten the parish wheels run-
ning fairly smooth, we discovered that by my mother’s
French house-keeping, that exquisitely careful house-
keeping which uses everything and wastes nothing, my
salary was going to be quite sufficient to cover our mod-
est manage, thus leaving my mother’s own income prac-
tically intact. We could use it in the parish ; but there
was so much to be done for that parish that we were
rather at a loss where to begin, or what one thing to
accomplish among so many things crying aloud. But
finally, tackling what seemed to us the worst of these
crying evils, we were able to turn the two empty rooms
upstairs into what Madame pleasantly called . Guest
Booms, thus remedying, to the best of our ability, the
absolute lack of any accommodation for tte sick and in-
jured poor. And as time passed, these Guest Rooms,
so greatly needed, proved not how much but how little
we could do. We could only afford to maintain two
beds on our small allowance, for they had to be abso-
lutely free, to help those for whom they were intended —
poor folks in immediate and dire need, for whom the
town had no other place except an insanitary room in
the jail. You could be bora and baptized in the Guest
Booms, or shriven and sent thence in hope. More often
you were coaxed back to health under my mother’s nurs-
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APPLEBORO 17
mg and C161ie’s cooking and the skill of Doctor Walter
Westmoreland.
No bill ever came to the Parish House from Dr.
Walter Westmoreland, whom my poor people look upon
as a direct act of Providence in their behalf. He is an
enormous man, big and ruddy and baldheaded and clean-
shaven, with tiie shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like
a pair of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he
never forgets the down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he
has a genius for remembering the mill-children. These
are his dear and special charge.
Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live
in a small town; he says you can save as many lives
in a little town as a big one, and folks need you more.
He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as being
merely poor people with money ; an idealist, who will tell
you bluntly that revelations haven’t ceased; they’ve
only changed for the better.
Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the
heart of a little child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon
my shoulder and tell me to my teeth that heaven is a
habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I do not
always agree with him; but along with everybody else
in Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses
that God has shown me, I do not count it least that this
good and kind man was sent in our need, to heal and
befriend the broken and friendless waifs and strays
who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest
Rooms.
And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor
fortuitously was I uprooted from my place and my peo-
ple and sent hither to impinge upon the lives of many
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SLIPPY McGEE
who were to be dearer to me than all that had gone he*
fore ; I was not idly sent to know and love Westmoreland,
and Mary Virginia, and Laurence ; and, above all, Slippy
McQee, whom we of Appleboro call the Butterfly Man.
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CHAPTER H
THE COMING OF SLIPPY MO GEE
O N a cold gray morning in December two mem-
bers of my flock, Poles who spoke bnt little
English and that little very badly, were on
their way to their daily toil in the canning factory. It
is a long walk from the Poles’ quarters to the factory,
and the workpeople must start early, for one is fined half
an hour’s time if one is five minutes late. The short-
cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the
mill district — for which cause we bury a yearly toll of
the children of the poor.
Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water
tank, is a grade crossing where so many terrible things
have happened that the colored people call that place
Dead Man’s Crossin’ and warn you not to go by there
of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things
lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming
out to show themselves after dark. If you must pass
it then you would better turn your coat inside out, pull
down your sleeves over your hands, and be very careful
to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a
specific against most ha’nts, though by no means able to
scare away all of them. Those at Dead Man’s Crossin’
are peculiarly malignant and hard to scare. Maum
Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the
track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow,
l»
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20
SLIPPY McGEE
and waving both his legs in his hands. Poor old Manm
Jinkey was so scared that she chattered her new false
teeth oat of her mouth, and she never found those teeth
to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as best
she could without them.
Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin’, the workmen
stumbled over a man lying beside the tracks; his cloth-
ing was tom to shreds, he was wet with the heavy night
dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly congealed
blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peer-
ing at this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early
morning, they thought he was dead like most of the
others found there.
For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether
it wouldn’t be better to leave him there to be found and
removed by folks with more time at their disposal. One
doesn’t like to lose time and be consequently fined, on
account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp; particu-
larly when Christmas is drawing near and money so
much needed that every penny counts.
The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a
second a glint of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned
feebly, and lay still again. Humanity prevailing, the
Poles looked about for help, but as yet the place was ’
quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter
off the Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon
it, and made straight for the Parish House; when acci-
dents such as this happened to men such as this, were n’t
the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish
House people? Indeed, there wasn’t any place else for
them, unless one excepted the rough room at the jail;
and the average small town jail — ours was n’t any excep-
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE 21
tion to the rule — is a place where a decent veterinary
would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles
brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin,
which they had found lying partly under him.
We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of
misfortune, so he was carried upstairs to the front Guest
Room, fortunately just then empty. The Poles turned
over to me the heavy package found with him, stolidly
requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary
tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they
had to do, and they had no further interest in him. No-
body had any interest iq. one of the unknown tramps who
got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man’s Crossin’.
The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some
strenuous days and nights with him, for that which had
been a leg had to come off at the knee ; he had lain in the
cold for some hours, he had sustained a frightful shock,
and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
the hands of any physician less skilled and determined
than Westmoreland he must have gone out. But West-
moreland, with his jaw set' followed his code and fenced
" with death for this apparently worthless and forfeited
life, using all his skill and finesse to outwit the great
Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man’s
chance that we were astonished when he turned the
comer — very, very feebly — and we did n’t have to place
another pine box in the potter’s field, alongside other un-
marked mounds whose occupants were other unknown
men, grim causes of Dead Man’s Crossin’s sinister
name.
The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him
quiet in time wore away. Our man woke up one fore-
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SLIPPY McGEE
22
noon dear-headed, if hollow-eyed and mortally weak.
He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
then his eyes came to Clelie and myself, but he did not
return the greetings of either. He just stared; he
asked no questions. Presently, very feebly, he tried to
move, — and found himself a cripple. He fell back upon
his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
lips — a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a
trapped wild beast. He began to revile heaven and
earth, the doctor, myself. Clelie, dapping her hands
over her outraged ears, fled as if from fiends. Indeed,
never before nor since have I heard such a frightful, in-
human power of profanity, such hideous oaths and
threats. When breath failed him he lay spent and
trembling, his chest rising and falling to his choking
gasps.
“You had better be thankful your life is spared you,
young man,” I said a trifle sharply, my nerves being
somewhat rasped; for I had helped Westmoreland
through more than one dreadful night, and I had sat
long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the
passing of a soul.
He glared. “Thankful?” he screamed, “Thankful,
hell ! I 've got to have two good legs to make any sort of
a getaway, haven’t I? Well, have I got 'em? I’m
down and out for fair, that 's what! Thankful? You
make me sick ! Honest to God, when you gas like that I
feel like bashing in your brain, if you 've got any! You
and your thankfulness!” He turned his quivering face
and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered, heartsick,
if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
creature.
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE 9.4
It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the
dreadful thing was that it seemed to be his spirit which
informed his flesh, an inherent unloveliness of soul upon
which the body was modeled, worked out faithfully, and
so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the fine
shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, power-
ful, springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the
shoulders; the arms unusually long, giving him a ter-
rible reach, the head round, well-shaped, covered with
thick reddish hair; cold, light, and intelligent eyes, full of
animosity and suspicion, reminding you unpleasantly of
the rattlesnake’s look, wary, deadly, and ready to strike.
"When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut
up^n each other formidably and without softness, and
the jaws thrust forward with the effect as of balled
fists. One ear was slightly larger than the other, hav-
ing the appearance of a swelling upon the lobe. In this
unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unex-
pected niceness. It was a good straight nose, yet it had
something of the pleasant tiptiltedness of a child’s. It
was the sort of nose which should have complemented
a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering
countenance, to which the red straggling stubble of
beard sprouting over jaws and throat lent a more sinister
note.
We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest
Booms, but somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest
and most hopeless we had yet encountered.
For three weary weeks had we struggled with him,
until the doctor, sighing with physical relief, said he was
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24 SLIPPY McGEE
out of danger and needed only such nursing as he was
sure to get.
“One does one’s duty as one finds it, of course,” said
the big doctor, looking down at the unpromising face
on the pillow, and shaking his head. “Yes, yes, yes,
one must do what ’s right, on the face of it, come what
will. There ’s no getting around that!” He glanced at
me, a shadow in his kind gray eyes. “But there are
times, my friend, when I wonder ! Now, this morning I
had to tell a working man his wife ’s got to die. There ’s
no help and no hope — she ’s got to die, and she a mother
of young children. So I have to try desperately,” said
the doctor, rubbing his nose, “to cling tooth and claw to
the hope that there is Something behind the scenes that
knows the forward-end of things — sin and sorrow and
disease and suffering and death things — and uses them
always for some beneficent purpose. But in the mean-
time the mother dies, and here you and I have been used
to save alive a poor useless devil of a one-legged tramp,
probably without his consent and against his will, be-
cause it had to be and we couldn’t do anything else!
Now, why! I can’t help but wonder!”
We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on
the pillow. And I wondered also, with even greater
cause than the doctor; for I had opened the oilskin
package the Poles found, and it had given me occasion
for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and
alarmed beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious
and unusual type, — not such tools as workmen carry
abroad in the light of day.
There was no one to whom I might confide that un-
pleasant discovery. I simply could not terrify my
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE 25
mother, nor could I in common decency burden the al-
ready overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to
turn to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or
heart one may admire, respect, or depend upon. My
guest had come to me with empty pockets and a bur-
glar’s kit ; a hint of that, and the sheriff had camped on
the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across
his knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I
couldn’t consult the law.
I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting,
which I find it rather hard to set down in cold words.
It is this: that as I grow older I have grown more and
more convinced that not fortuitously, not by chance,
never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
come vitally into each other ’s lives. I have walked up
the steep sides of Calvary to find out that when another
wayfarer pauses for a space beside us, it is because
one has something to give, the other something to re-
ceive.
So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package
weighted down with the seven deadly sins over to the
church, and hid it under the statue of St. Stanislaus,
whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to kneel
and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back
upon his wooden stand, and thrust that package up to
where his hands fold over the sheaf of lilies he carries.
St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most holy youth. No
one would ever suspect him of hiding under his brown
habit a burglar’s kit !
When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail
Marys for guidance, I went back to the little room called
my study, where my books and papers and my butterfly
V
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SLIPPY McGEE
£6
cabinets and collecting outfits were kept, and set myself
seriously to studying my files of newspapers, beginning
at a date a week preceding my man’s appearance.
Then:
Slippy McGee
Makes Good His Name Once More.
Slips One Over On The Police.
Noted Burglar Escapes.
said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The
dispatches were dated from Atlanta, and when I turned
to the Atlanta papers I found them, too, headlining the
escape of “Slippy McGee.”
I learned that “the slickest crook in America” find-
ing himself somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the
seething underworld of New York, because the police sus-
pected him of certain daring and mysterious burglaries
although they had no positive proof against him, had
chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile.
But the Southern authorities had been urgently warned
to look out for him; in consequence they had been so
close upon his heels that he had been surrounded while
“on a job.” Half an hour later, and he would have
gotten away with his plunder ; but, although they were
actually upon him, by what seemed a miracle of daring
and of luck he slipped through their fingers, escaped
under their very noses, leaving no clue to his where-
abouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in At-
lanta, though as he had no known confederates and al-
ways worked alone and unaided, the police were at a loss
for information. The man had simply vanished, after
his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE 27
his past exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy
McGee was a very noted personage in his chosen field. I
sat for a long time staring at those papers, and my
thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I dot
I presently decided that I could and must question
my guest. So far he had volunteered no information
beyond the curt statement that his name was John Flint
and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
been stealing a ride and he had slipped — and when he
woke up we had him and he hadn’t his leg. And if
some people knew how to be obliging they ’d make a noise
like a hoop and roll away, so ’s other people could pound
their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered
them to do.
As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, sus-
picious, unfriendly face, I came to the conclusion that if
this were not McGee himself it could very well be some
one quite as dangerous.
“Friend,” said I, “we do not as a rule seek informa-
tion about the guests in these rooms. We do not have
to; they explain themselves. I should never question
your assertion that your name is Flint, mid I sincerely
hope it is Flint ; but — there are reasons why I must and
do ask you for certain definite information about your-
self.”
The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.
“If John Flint ’s not fancy enough for you,” he sug-
gested truculently, “suppose you call me Percy? Some
peach of a moniker, Percy, ain’t it?”
“Percy?”
“Sure, Percy,” he grinned impudently. “But if you
got a grouch against Ferey, can it, and make me Algy.
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88 SLIPPY McGEE
1 don’t mind. It ’s not me beefing about monikers; it ’a
you.”
“I am also,” said I, regarding him steadily and ignor-
ing his flippancy, “I am also obliged to ask you what is
your occupation — when you are not stealing rides!”
“Looks like it might be answering questions just now,
don ’t it ? What you want to know for f Whatever it is,
I ’m not able to do it now, am I! But as you ’re so nat-
urally bellyaching to know, why, I ’ve been in the ring.”
“So I presumed. Thank you,” said I, politely.
“And your name is John Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as
I choose. Percy and Algy are rather unusual names for
a gentleman who has been in the ring, don’t you think!”
“I think,” he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious,
“that I ’m named what I dam’ please to be named, and
no squeals from skypilots about it, neither. Say! what
you driving at, anyhow! If what I tell you ain’t satis-
fying, suppose you slip ovgr a moniker to suit yourself —
and go away!”
“Oh ! Suppose then,” said I, without taking my eyes
from his, “suppose, then, that I chose to call you —
Slippy McQeet”
I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from
flying at my throat. As it was, his long arms with the
hands upon them outstretched like a beast’s claws, shot
out ferociously. His face contracted horribly, and of a
sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly that he
had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment
he lay Still, glaring, panting, helpless ; while I stood and
watched him unmoved.
“Ain’t you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though!”
he jeered presently. “Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair
gitized by
Google
THE COMING OP SLIPPY McGEE 29
and Nick Carter eating out of your hand ! You damned
skypilot ! ’ ’ His voice cracked. “You’re all alike!
Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!”
I made no reply ; only a great compassion for this mis-
taken and miserable creature surged like a wave over my
heart.
“For God’s sake don’t stand there staring like a bug-
house owl!” he gritted. “Well, what yop going to dot
Bawl for the bulls t What put you wise!”
“Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag — and
looked up the newspapers,” I answered succinctly.
“Huh ! A fat lot of good it ’ll do me to get well now,
won’t itf You think I ought to thank you for butting
in and keeping me from dying without knowing anything
about it, don’t you! Well, you got another think com-
ing. I don’t. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring t Ever
hear of a one-hoofed dipt A long time I ’d be Slippy
McGee playing cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to
leave some of my legs home when I needed them right
there on the job, wouldn’t It Oh, sure!”
“And was it,” I wondered, “such a fine thing to be
Slippy McGee, flying from the police, that one should
lament his — er — disappearance t ’ ’
His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well
as astonishment.
“Didn’t you read the papers!” he wondered in his
turn. “There don’t many travel in my class, skypilot!
Why, I have n't got any equals — the best of them trail a
mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you want to know about
Slippy McGee ! And I let the happy dust alone. Most
dips are dopes, but I was too dick; I cut it out. I
knew if the dope once gets you, then the bulls get next
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so
SLIPPY McGEE
Not for Slippy. I ’ve kept my head dear, and that 'a
how I Ve muddled theirs. They never get next to any-
thing until I Ve deaned up and dusted. Why, honest to
God, I can open any box made, easy as easy, just like I
can put it all over any bull alive! That is,” a spasm
twisted his face and into his voice crept the acute
an guish of the artist deprived of all power to create,
“that is, I could — until I made that last getaway on a
freight, and this happened.”
‘‘I am sorry,” said I soothingly, ‘‘that you have lost
your leg, of course. But better to lose your leg than
your soul, my son. Why, how do you know — ”
He writhed. “Can it!” he implored. “Cut it out!
Ain’t I up against enough now, for God’s sake? Down
and out — and nothing to do but have my soul curry-
combed and mashfed by a skypilot with both his legs and
all his mouth on him! Ain’t it hell, though? Say, you
better send for the cops. I ’d rather stand for the pen
than the preaching. What ’d you do with my bag,
anyway?”
“But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and
I would rather not send for the police — afterwards, when
you are better, you may do so if you choose. You are a
free agent. As for your bag, why — it is — it is — in the
keeping of the Church.”
“Huh!” said he, and twisted his mouth cynically.
“Huh! Then it ’s good-bye tools, I suppose. ' I *m no
churchmember, thank God, but I ’ve heard that once the
Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all
hell can’t pry her loose.”
Now I don’t know why, but at that, suddenly and in-
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE 81
explicable as if I bad glimpsed a ray of light, I felt
cheered.
“Why, that ’s it exactly!” said I, smiling. “Once the
Church gets real hold of a thing— or a man — worth while,
she holds on so fast that all hell can’t pry her loose.
Won’t you try to remember that, my son 1” .
“If it ’s a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself,”
said he sourly. “It don’t listen so horrible funny to
me. And you have n’t peeped yet about what you ’re
going to do. I ’m waiting to hear. I ’m real inter-
ested.”
“Why, I really don’t know yet,” said I, still cheer-
fully. “Suppose we wait and see? Here you are, safe
and harmless enough for the present. And God is good ;
perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other
more than you and the police need each other — who can
tell? I should simply set myself strictly to the task
of getting entirely well, if I were you — and let it go
at that.”
He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled pain-
fully.
. “Devil-dodger,” said he, after a pause, “are you just
making a noise with your face, or is that on the level?”
“That ’s on the level.”
His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And
as I held his glance, a hint of wonder and amazement
crept into his face.
“God A’mighty! I believe him!” he gasped. And
then, as if ashamed of that real feeling, he scowled.
“Say, if you ’re really on the level, I guess you ’d
better not be flashing the name of Slippy McGee around
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8 »
SLIPPY McGEE
promiscuous, ’ ’ he suggested presently. “It won't do
either you or me any good, see? And say, parson, —
forget Percy and Algy. How was I to know you ’d be
so white? And look here: I did know a gink named
John Flint, once. Only he was called Keddy, .because
he ’d got such a blazing red head and whiskers. He ’s
croaked, so he would n’t mind me using his moniker, see*
mg it ’s not doing him any good now.’’
“Let us agree upon John Flint,’’ I decided.
“Help yourself,” he agreed, equably.
CISlie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every
stiffened line, brought him his broth, which he took with
a better grace than I had yet witnessed. He even added
a muttered word of thanks.
“ It ’s funny,” he reflected, when the yellow woman
had left the room with the empty bowl, “it ’s sure
funny, but d ’ye know, I ’m lots easier in my mind,
knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-
luck gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have
to lie, except of course when I need a smooth spiel for
the cops. I guess I ’ll snooze a bit now,” he added, as
I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the door :
“Parson?”
“Well?”
“Why — er — come in a bit to-night, will you? That
is, if you ’ve got time. And look here : don’t you get the
notion in your bean I ’m just some little old two-by-four
guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip. I ’m not.
Why, I ’ve been the whole show and manager besides.
Yep, I ’m Slippy McGee himself.”
He paused, to let this sink into my consciousness. I
must confess that I was -more profoundly impressed
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE SS
than even he had any idea of. And then, magnani-
mously, he added: “You’re sure some white man,
parson.”
“Thank you, John Flint,” said I, with due modesty.
Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and
hopeful, but I was. My guest was a criminal ; he had n’t
shown the slightest sign of compunction or of shame;
instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And yet —
I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly conceal-
ing a burglar, my conscience remained clear and un-
clouded, and I had a calm intuitive assurance of right.
So deeply did I feel this that when I went over to the
church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp full
of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he
deserved some compensation for hiding that package
under his sheaf of lilies.
The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that
another forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish
House. But had not the Parish House sheltered other
such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no reason to give
himself the least concern, beyond making the most casual
inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad
to let me keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a
notorious criminal in a Parish House Guest Room ? Who
would connect that all too common occurrence, a tramp
maimed by the railroad, with the mysterious disappear-
ance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the
present, I could feel sure that the man was safe.
And in the meantime, in the orderly proceeding of
everyday life, while he gained strength under my
mother’s wise and careful nursing and Westmoreland’s
wise and careful overseeing, there came to him those
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SLIPPY McGEE
84
who were instruments for good — my mother first, whom,
like Clelie, he never called anything but “Madame”
and whom, like Clelie, he presently obeyed with unques-
tioning and childlike readiness. Now, Madame is a truly
wonderful person when she deals with people like him.
Never for a moment lowering her own natural and beau-
tiful dignity, but without a hint of condescension,
Madame manages to find the just level upon which both
can stand as on common ground; then, without noise,
she helps, and she conveys the impression that thus
noiselessly to help is the only just, natural and beautiful
thing for any decent person to do, unless, perhaps, it
might be to receive in the like spirit.
Judge Mayne’s son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boy- 1
ish enthusiasm, was such another instrument. He had
a handsome, intelligent face, a straight and beautiful
body, and the pleasantest voice in the world. His mother
in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet
her constant demands the judge and his son had de-
veloped an angelic patience with weakness. They were
both rather quiet and undemonstrative, this father and
son; the older man, in fact had a stem visage at first
glance, until one learned to know it as the face of a
man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the
boy, no one could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster,
who could spend an hour with the most unlikely in-
valid and leave him all the .better for it. I was unusually
busy just then, Clelie frankly hated and feared the man
upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were
many heavy and lonesome hours which Laurence set
himself the task of filling. I left this to the boy him-
self, offering no suggestions.
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THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE 35
“Padre,” said the boy to me, some time later, “that
chap upstairs is the hardest nut I ever tried to crack.
There Ve been times when I felt tempted to crack him
with a sledge-hammer, if you want the truth. You
know, he always seemed to like me to read to him, but
I ’ve never been able to discover whether or not he liked
what I read. He never asked me a single question, he
never seemed interested enough to make a comment.
But I think that I Ve made a dent in him at last.”
4 4 A dent ! In Flint ? With what adamantine pick, oh
hardiest of miners?”
“With a book. Guess!”
“I couldn’t. I give up.”
‘ ‘The Bible!” said Laurence.
The Bible ! Had I chosen to read it to him, he would
have resented it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I
looked at the boy’s laughing face, and wondered, and
wondered.
“And how,” said I, curious, “did you happen to pitch
on the Bible?”
“Why, I got to studying about this chap. I wanted
something that ’d reach him . I was puzzled. And then
I remembered hearing my father say that the Bible
is the most interesting book in the world because it ’s
the most personal. There ’s something in it for every-
body. So I thought there ’d be something in it for
John Flint, and I tried it on him, without telling him
what J. was giving him. I just plunged right in, head
over heels. Lord, Padre, it is a wonderful old book,
isn’t it? Why, I got so lost in it myself that I forgot
all about John Flint, until I happened to glance up and
see that he was up to the eyes in it, just like I was!
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SLIPPY McGEE
He likes the fights and he gloats oxer the spoils. He ’s
asking for more. I think of turning Paul loose on
him.”
“Well, if after the manner of men Paul fonght with
wild beasts at Ephesus,” I said hopefully. *‘I dare say
he ’ll be able to hold his own even with John Flint”
“I like Paul best of all, myself,” said Laurence.
“You see, Padre, my father and I have needed a dose of
Paul more.than once — to stiffen our backbones. So I ’m
going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John Flint.
’By, Padre — I ’ll look in to-morrow — I left poor old
Elijah up in a cave with no water, and the ravens over-
due!”
He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on
the back of his head, and I looked after him with the
warm and comforting sense that the world is just that
much better for such as he.
The boy was now, in his last high school year, plan-
ning to study law — all the Maynes took to law as a duck
to water. Brave, simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking,
scrupulously honorable, — this was one of the diamonds
used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy McGee.
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CHAPTER III
NEIGHBORS
O N a morning in late March, with a sweet and
fresh wind blowing, a clear sun shining, and a
sky so full of soft white woolly clouds that you
might fancy the sky-people had turned their fleecy flock
out to graze in the deep blue pastures, Laurence Mayne
and I brought John Flint downstairs and rolled him out
into the glad, green garden, in the comfortable wheel-
chair that the mill-people had given us for a Christmas
present; my mother and Clelie followed, and our little
dog Pitache marched ahead, putting on ridiculous airs
of responsibility ; he being a dog with a great idea of his
own importance and wholly given over to the notion that
nothing could go right if he were not there to superin-
tend and oversee it.
The wistaria was in her zenith, girdling the tree-tops
with amethyst; the Cherokee rose had just begun to
reign, all in snow-white velvet, with a gold crown and
a green girdle for greater glory; the greedy brown
grumbling bees came to her table in dusty cohorts, and
over her green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early
butterflies, clothed delicately as in kings’ raiment. In
the comers glowed the ruby-colored Japanese quince,
and the long sprays of that flower I most dearly love, the
spring-like spirea which the children call bridal wreath,
brushed you gently as you passed the gate. I never
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SLIPPY McGEE
see it deck itiself in bridal white, I never inhale its shy,
clean scent, without a tightening of the throat, a misting
of the eyes, a melting of the heart.
Across our garden and across Miss Sally Ruth Dex-
ter’s you could see in Major Appleby Cartwright’s yard
the peach trees in pink party dresses, ruffled by the wind.
Down the paths marched my mother’s daffodils and
hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in be-
tween. Robins and wrens, orioles and mocking-birds,
blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and blue-birds and
cardinals, all were busy house-building; one heard calls
and answers, saw flashes of painted wings, followed by
outbursts of ecstasy. If one should lay one’s ear to the
ground on such a morning I think one might hear the
heart of the world.
“j Hallelujah! Risen! Risen!” breathed the glad,
green things, pushing from the warm mother-mold.
“Living! Living! Loving! Loving!” flashed and
fluted the flying things, joyously.
We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness
of renewed life, stopping the chair under a glossy, stately
magnolia. My mother and Clelie and Laurence and I
bustled about to make him comfortable. Pitache stood
stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly admonishing
forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We
spread a light shawl over the man’s knees, for it is not
easy to bear a cruel physical infirmity, to see oneself
marred and crippled, in the growing spring. He looked
about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his eyes
had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of
an animal ’8. He had never sat in a garden before, in
all his life! Think of it!
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39
Whenever we bring one of our Guest Roomers down-
stairs, Miss Sally Ruth Dexter promptly comes to her
side of the fence to look him over. She came this morn-
ing, looked at our man critically, and showed plain dis-
approval of him in every line of her face.
On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most
men and many women. She does not believe in wasting
too much sympathy upon people either; she says folks
get no more than they deserve and generally not half as
much.
Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person
in Appleboro. She is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-
'eyed, suffers from a congenital incapacity to refrain
from telling the unwelcome truth when people are madly
trying to save their faces, — she calls this being frank, —
is tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor
of what she herself complacently refers to as “a Fig-
ure.”
For a woman so convinced we ’re all full of natural
and total depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the
dust, and the devil’s natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally
Ruth manages to retain a simple and unaffected good-
ness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as
makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost,
but while you ’re here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup,
chicken-with-cream, preserves, gumbo, neither such mar-
velous raised bread as Miss Sally Ruth knows how to
make with a perfection beyond all praise.
She has a tiny house and a tiny income, which satis-
fies her; she has never married. She told my mother
once, cheerfully, that she guessed she must be one of
those bom eunuchs of the spirit the Bible mentions—
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SLIPPY McGEE
it was intended for her, and she was glad of it, for it
had certainly saved her a sight of worry and trouble.
There is a cherished legend in our town that Major
Appleby Cartwright once went over to Savannah on a
festive occasion and was there joyously entertained by the
honorable the Chatham Artillery. The Chatham Artil-
lery brews a Punch ; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but
withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine
that mocketh and maketh mad. And they gave it to
Major Appleby Cartwright in copious draughts.
Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose,
put on his Prince Albert, donned his top hat, picked
a huge bunch of zinnias, and at nine o’clock in the morn-
ing marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter’s.
We differ as to certain unimportant details "of that
historic call, but we are in the main agreed upon the
conversation that ensued.
“ Sally Ruth,” said the major, depositing his bulky
person in a rocking chair, his hat upon the floor, and
wiping his forehead with a spotless handkerchief the
size of a respectable sheet, ‘ ‘Sally Ruth, you like Old
Maids!” Here he presented the zinnias.
“Why, I ’ve got a yard full of ’em myself, Major.
Whatever made you bother to pick ’em! But to whom
much hath more shall be given, I suppose,” said she,
resignedly, and put them on the whatnot.
“Sally Ruth,” said the major solemnly, ignoring
this indifferent reception of his offering. “Sally Ruth,
come to think of it, an Old Maid ’s a miserable, stiff,
scentless sort of a flower. You might think, when you
first glance at ’em, that they ’re just like any other
flowers, but they ’re not; they ’re without one single,
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NEIGHBORS 41
solitary redeemin’ particle of sweetness! The Lord
m&de ’em for a warnin’ to women.
“What good under God’s sky does it do you to be an
old maid, Sally Ruth? You ’re flyin’ in the face of
Providence. No lady should fly in the face of Provi-
dence — she ’d a sight better fly to the bosom of some
man, where she belongs. This mawnin’ I looked out of
my window and my eye fell upon these unfortunate
flowers. Right away I thought of you, livin’ over here
all alone and by yourself, with no man’s bosom to lean
on — you haven’t really got anything but a few fowls
and the Lord to love, have you ? And, Sally Ruth, tears
came to my eyes. Talk not of tears till you have seen
the tears of warlike men! I believe it would almost
scare you to death to see me cryin’, Sally Ruth! I got
to thinkin’, and I said to myself: ‘Appleby Cartwright,
you have always done your duty like a man. You
charged up to the very muzzle of Yankee guns once,
and you weren’t scared wu’th a damn! Are you goin’
to be scared now ? There ’s a plain duty ahead of you ;
Sally Ruth ’s a fine figure of a woman, and she ought
to have a man’s bosom to lean on. Go offer Sally Ruth
yours!’ So here I am, Sally Ruth!” said the major
valiantly.
Miss Sally Ruth regarded him critically; then:
“You ’re drunk, Appleby Cartwright, that ’s what ’s
the matter with you. You and your bosom ! Why, it ’s
not respectable to talk like that! At your age, too!
I ’m ashamed of you!”
“I was a little upset, over in Savannah,” admitted
the major. “Those fellows must have gotten me to
swallow over a gallon of their infernal brew — and it
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I
42 SLIPPY McGEE
goes down like silk, too. Listen at me: don’t you ever
let ’em make you drink a gallon of that punch, Sally
Buth.”
“I ’ve seen its effects before. Go home and sleep it
off,” said Miss Sally Ruth, not unkindly. “If you came
over to warn me about filling up on Artillery Punch,
your duty ’s done — I ’ve never been entertained by the
Chatham Artillery, and I don’t ever expect to be. I
suppose it was intended for you to be a born goose,
Appleby, so it ’d be a waste of time for me to fuss with
you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let Caesar put
you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head
and to keep it wet. That ’ll help to cool you off.”
“Sally Ruth,” said the major, laying his hand upon
his heart and trying desperately to focus her with an
eye that would waver in spite of him, “Sally Ruth,
somebody ’ s got to do something for you, and it might
as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, you Ve settin ’ like
clabber I It ’s a shame; it ’s a cryin’ shame, for you ’re
a fine woman. I don’t mean to scare or flutter you,
Sally Ruth, — no gentleman ought to scare or flutter a
lady — but I ’m offerin’ you my hand and heart; here ’s
my bosom for you to lean on.”
“That Savannah brew is worse even than I thought —
it ’s run the man stark crazy,” said Miss Sally Ruth,
viewing him with growing concern.
“Me crazy! Why, I ’m askin’ you,” said the major
with awful dignity, “ I ’m askin’ you to marry me!”
“Marry yout Marry fiddlesticks! Shucks!” said
the lady.
“You won’t?” Amazement made him sag down in
his chair. He stared at her owl-like. “Woman,” said
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NEIGHBORS 43
he solemnly, “when I see my duty I try to do it. But
I warn you — it ’s your last chance.”
“I hope,” said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, “that it ’s my
last chance to make a bom fool of myself. Why, you
old gasbag, if I had to stay in the same house with you
I ’d be tempted to stick a darning needle in you to hear
you explode ! Appleby, I ’m like that woman that had
a chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot
that swore, and a cat that stayed out nights; she didn’t
need a man — and no more do I.”
“Sally Ruth,” said the major feelingly, “when I
came here this mawnin’ it wasn’t for my own good —
it was for yours. And to think this is all the thanks I
get for bein’ willin’ to sacrifice myself ! My God! The
ingratitude of women!”
He looked at Miss 'Sally Ruth, and Miss Sally Ruth
looked at him. And then suddenly, without a moment’s
warning, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and took Major Appleby
Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns
and had n’t been scared wu’th a damn, by the ear. She
tugged, and the major rose, as one pulled upward by
' his bootstraps.
“Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil!
It wasn’t intended for any mortal man to marry you —
Sally Ruth, I would n’t marry you now for forty billion
dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn
loose!” screeched the major.
Unheeding his anguished protests, which brought
'Judge Hammond Mayne on the run, thinking somebody
was being murdered, Miss Sally Ruth marched her suitor
out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she
paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with
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SLIPPY McGEE
hooks of steel, took firm hold upon the gallant major’s
other ear. Then she shook him; his big crimson coun-
tenance, resembling a huge overripe tomato, waggled
deliriously to and fro.
“I was bom” — shake — “an old maid,” — shake, shake,
shake — “I have lived — by the grace of God” — shake,
shake, shake — “an old maid, and I expect” — shake—
“to die an old maid! I don’t propose to have” — shake
— “an old windbag offering me his blnbbery old bosom”
— shake, shake, SHAKE — “at this time of my life! —
and don’t you forget it, Appleby Cartwright ! THERE !
You go back home” — shake, shake, shake — “and sober
up, you old gander, you!”
Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the, order
of his going, but went at once, galloping as if a company
of those Yankees with whom he had once fought were
upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.
However, they being next-door neighbors and friends
of a lifetime’s standing, peace was finally patched up.
In Appleboro we do not mention this historic meeting
when either of the participants can hear us, though it is
one of our classics and no home is complete without it.
The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.
This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth ad-
dressed our invalid directly and without prelude, after
her wont. She doesn’t believe in beating about the
bush:
“The wages of walking up and down the earth and
going to and fro in it, tramping like Satan, is a lost
leg. Not that it was n’t intended you should lose yours
— and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to you.”
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NEIGHBORS 45
“Well, take it from me,” lie said grimly, “there ’a
nobody but me collecting my wages.”
A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss
Sally Ruth’s snapping eyes.
“Come!” said she, briskly. “If you’ve got sense
enough to see that, you ’re not so far away from the
truth as you might be. Collecting your wages is the
good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But every-
thing ’s intended, so you don’t need to be too sorry
for yourself, any way you look at it. And you could
just as well have lost both legs while you were at it,
you know.” She paused reflectively. “Let ’s see: I ’ve
got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day — I ’ll send you
over some, after awhile.” She nodded, and went back
to her housework.
Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her
house to oversee, I had many overdue calls; so we left
Pitache and John Flint together, out in the birdhaunted,
sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the golden morn-
ing hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green
garden, quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate
when there ’s a dog’s friendly nose to be thrust into one’s
hand.
I am afraid that at first he missed all this; for he
could think of nothing but himself and that which had
befallen him, coming upon him as a bolt from the blue.
He had had, heretofore, nothing but his body — and now
his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a
drag upon him. Realizing this acutely, untrained, un-
disciplined, he was savagely sullen, impenetrably morose.
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SLIPPY McGEE
He tired of Laurence’s reading — I think the hoy’s free
quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body, the
fact that he could run and jump as pleased 1pm, irked
and chafed the man new and unused to his own physical
infirmity.
He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him sav-
agely repulse the dog, who, shocked and outraged at this
exhibition of depravity, withdrew, casting backward
glances of horrified and indignant reproach.
But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that
bitter and contracted heart had to expand somewhat.
Gradually the ferocity faded, leaving in its room an
anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long
hours, when, concentrated upon himself, he must have
faced the problem of his future and, like one before
an impassable stone wall, had to fall back, baffled. He
could be sure of only one thing: that never again could
he be what he had been once — “the slickest cracksman in
America.’’ This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life
had been exactly what he chose to make it: he had put
himself to the test, and he had proven himself the most
daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most cunning, in that sin-
ister world in which he had shone with so evil a light.
He had been Slippy McOee. Sure of himself, his had
been that curious inverted pride which is the stigmata
of the criminal.
More than once I saw him writhe in his chair, tor-
mented, shaken, spent with futile curses, impotently
lamenting his lost kingdom. He still had the skill, the
cold calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now, by a
cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out 1 The
\
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NEIGHBORS
47
end had come for him, and he in his heyday! There
were moments when, watching him, I had the sensation
as of witnessing almost visibly, here in our calm sunny
garden, the Dark Powers fighting openly for a soul.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked-
ness in high places
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CHAPTER IV
UNDERWINGS
I P I have not heretofore spoken of Mary Virginia,
it is because all that winter she and Mrs. Eustis
had been away; and in consequence Appleboro was
dull enough. For the Eustises are our wealthiest and
most important family, just as the Eustis house, with
its pillared, Greek-temple-effect front, is by far the
handsomest house in town. When we have important
folks to entertain, we look to the Eustises to save our
faces for us by putting them up at their house.
One afternoon, shortly after we Jiad gotten settled in
Appleboro, I came home to find my mother entertaining
no less a personage than Mrs. Eustis; she was n’t calling
on the Catholic priest and his mother, you understand;
far from itf She was recognizing Armand De Ranee
and Adele de Marsignan !
Mrs. Eustis was a fair, plump little partridge of a
woman, so perfectly satisfied with herself that brains,
in her case, would have amounted to a positive calamity.
She is an instance of the fascination a fool seems to have
for men of undoubted powers of mind and heart, for
Eustis, who had both to an unusual degree, loved her
devotedly, even while he smiled at her. She had, after
some years of childlessness, laid him under an everlast-
ing obligation by presenting him with a daughter, an
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UNDERWINGS 49
obligation deepened by the fact that the child was in
every sense her father’s child, not her mother’s.
That afternoon she brought the little girl with
her, to make our acquaintance. When the child, shyly
friendly, looked up, it seemed to me for an anguished
moment as if another little girl had walked out of the
past, so astonishingly like was she to that little lost play-
mate of my youth. Right then and there Mary Virginia
walked into my heart and took possession, as of a place
swept and garnished and long waiting her coming.
When we knew her better my mother used to say that /
if she could have chosen a little girl instead of the little
boy that had been I, she must have chosen Mary Virginia
Eustis out of all the world.
Like Judge Mayne’s Laurence, she chose to make the
Parish House her second home — for indeed my mother
ever seemed to draw children to her, as by some delight-
ful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and
to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accom-
plishments, and to speak French with flawless perfection ;
she reaped the benefit of my mother’s girlhood spent in
a convent in France ; and Mrs. Eustis was far too shrewd
not to appreciate the value of this. And so we acquired
Mary Virginia.
I watched the lovely miracle of her growth with an
almost painful tenderness. Had I not become a priest,
had I realized those spring hopes of mine ; and had there
been little children resembling their mother, then my
own little girls had been like this one. Even thus had
been their blue eyes, and theirs, too, such hair of such
curling blackness.
The hours I spent with the little girl and Laurence
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SLIPPY McGEE
helped me as well as them; these fresh souls and grow*
ing minds freshened and revived mine, and kept me
young in heart.
“We are all made of dust,” said my mother once.
“But Mary Virginia’s is star dust. Star dust, and dew,
and morning gold,” she added musingly.
“She simply cannot imagine evil, much less see it in
anything or in anybody,” I told Madame, for at times
the child’s sheer innocence troubled me for her. “One
is puzzled how to bring home to this naive soul the.
ugly truth that all is not good. Now, Laurence is better
balanced. He takes people and events with a saving
grain of skepticism. But Mary Virginia is divinely
blind.”
My mother regarded me with a tolerant smile. “Do
not worry too much over that divinely blind one, my
son,” said she. “I assure you, she is quite capable of
seeing a steeple in daylight! Observe this: yesterday
Laurence angered her, and she seized him by the hair
and bumped his head against the study wall — no mild
thump, either! She has in her quite enough of the
leaven of unrighteousness to save her, at a pinch — for
Laurence was entirely right, she entirely wrong. Yet —
she made him apologize before she consented to forgive
him, and he did it gratefully. She allowed him to
understand how magnanimous she was in thus pardoning
him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply im-
pressed, as men-creatures should be under such circum-
stances. Such wisdom, and she but a chilch I was en-
chanted!”
“Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand
you! Surely you reproved her!”
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UNDERWINGS
61
“Reprove her!” My mother’s voice was full of aston-
ishment. “Why should I reprove her? She was per-
fectly right ! ”
“Perfectly right! Why, you said — indeed, I assure
you, you said that Laurence had been entirely right, she
entirely wrong!”
“Oh, that l I see; well, as for that, she was.”
“Then, surely — ”
“My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely
right when she makes the man apologize,” said my
mother firmly. “That is the Law, fixed as the Medea’
and the Persians’, and she who forgets or ignores it is
ground between the upper and the nether millstones.
Mary Virginia remembered and obeyed. When she
grows up you will all of you adore her madly. Why,
then, should she be reproved?”
I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence get-
ting his head bumped and then gratefully apologizing
to the darling shrew who did it, without a cold wind
stirring my hair. And yet — Laurence, and I, too, love
her all the more dearly for it! Miserere, Dominel
It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Apple-
boro. She had written us a bubbling letter, telling us
just when we were to expect her, and how happy she
was at the thought of being home once more. We, too,
rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was
so happy that she planned a little intimate feast to cele-
brate the child’s return.
I remember how calm and mild an evening it was. At
noon there had been a refreshing shower, and the air
was deliciously pure and clear, and full of wet woodsy
scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became
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SLIPPY McGEE
prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge ; and all our
birds, leaving for a moment such household torments as
squalling insatiable mouths that must be filled, became
jubilant choristers. ‘‘The opulent dyepots of the
angels” had been emptied lavishly across the sky, and
the old Parish House lay steeped in a serene and
heavenly glow, every window glittering diamond-bright
to the west.
Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding
her cooing pigeons, which fluttered about her, lighting
upon her shoulder, surrounding her with a bright-colored
living cloud; the judge’s black cat Panch lay along
the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regret-
fully with his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne
kitchen-steps came, faintly, Daddy January’s sweet
quavering old voice : (
“ — Gwine tuh climb up higher V higher.
Some uh dese days — ”
John Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and
somber eyes, hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training
himself to use the crutches Westmoreland had lately
brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging him-
self along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch
struck a discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the
spring evening; nor could we say anything to comfort
him, we who were not maimed.
Came a high, sweet, shrill call at the gate; a high
yelp of delight from Pitache, hurtling himself forward
like a woolly white cannonball; a sound of light and
flying feet; and Mary Virginia ran into the garden, the
little overjoyed dog leaping frantically about her. She
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53
wore a white frock, and over it a light scarlet jacket.
Her blue eyes were dancing, lighting her sweet and fresh
face, colored like a rose. The gay little breeze that came
along with her stirred her skirts, and fluttered her scarlet
ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You might
think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in
the Parish House garden and stood before you in this
gracious and virginal shape, at once delicate and vital.
Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left,
dashed to the fence to call greetings. My mother, seiz-
ing the child by the arms, held her off a moment, to
look her over fondly; then, drawing her closer, kissed
her as a daughter is kissed.
I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that
painful happiness her presence always occasioned me,
when she came back after an absence — as if the Other
Girl flashed into view for a quick moment, and then
was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking
down at her with boyish condescension.
“Huh ! I can eat hominy off her head !" said he, ag-
gravatingly.
“Old Mister Biggity!" flashe^ Mary Virginia. And
then she turned and met, face to face, the fixed stare of
John Flint, hanging upon his crutches as one might upon
a cross, — a stare long, still, intent, curious, speculative,
almost incredulous.
“You are the Padre's last guest, aren't you!" her
eyes were full of gravest sympathy. “I ’m so sorry you
met with such a misfortune — but I 'm gladder you 're
alive. It 's so good just to be alive in the spring, isn't
it?" She smiled at him directly, taking him, as it were,
into a pleasant confidence. She seemed perfectly un-
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SLIPPY McGEE
conscious of the evil unloveliness of him; Maty Vir-
ginia always seemed to miss the evil, passing it over as
if it didn’t exist. Instead, diving into the depths of
other personalities, always she brought to the surface
whatever pearl of good might lie concealed at the bot-
tom. To her this sinister cripple was simply another
human being, with whose misfortune one must sympa-
thize humanly.
Clelie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new
red-and-white bandanna to do greater honor to the little
girl whom she adored, set a table under the trees and
spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches, the delectable
little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother had
made to celebrate the child’s return. And we had tea,
making very merry, for she had a thousand amusing
things to tell us, every airy trifle informed with some-
thing of her own brave bright mirthful spirit. John
Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying
beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and
drank his tea stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for
him to break bread in such company.
“Padre,” said Mary Virginia with deep gravity.
“My aunt Jenny says I ’m growing up. She says I ’ll
have to put up my hair and let down my frocks pretty
soon, and that I ’ll probably be thinking of beaux in
another year, though she hopes to goodness I won’t,
until I ’ve got through with school at least.”
The almost unconscious flnitation of Miss Jenny’s
pecking, birdlike voice made me smile.
“Beaux! Long skirts! Put up hair! Great Scott,
will you listen to the kid!” scoffed Laurence. “You
everlasting little silly, you ! P’tite Madame, these cakes
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are certainly all to the good. May I have another two
or three, please!"
"I ’m ’most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne,” said
Mary Virginia, with dignity. “You ’re only seventeen,
so you don’t need to give yourself such hateful airs.
You ’re not too old to be greedy, anyhow. Padre, ant
I growing up!’’
“I fear so, my child,’’ said I, gloomily.
“You ’re not glad, either, are you, Padre!’’
“But you were such a delightful child,” I temporized.
“Oh, lovely!” said Laurence, eying her with unflat-
tering brotherliness. “And she had so much feeling,
too, Mary Virginia! Why, when I was sick once, she
wanted me to die, so she could ride to my funeral in the
front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little ghoul!
She was horribly disappointed when I got betteiv-she
thought it disobliging of me, and that I ’d done it to
spite her. Once, too, when I tried to reason with her —
and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a Md did — she
bumped my head until I had knots on it. There ’s your
delightful Mary Virginia for you!”
“Anyhow, you didn’t die and become an angel— you
stayed disagreeably alive ant} you ’re going to become
a lawyer,” said Mary Virginia, too gently. “And your
head was bumpable, Laurence, though I ’m sorry to say
I don’t ever expect to bump it again. Why, I ’m going
away to school and when I come back I ’ll be Miss Eus-
tis, and you ’ll be Mr. Mayne! Won’t it be funny,
though!”
“I don’t see anything funny in calling you Mum
Eustis,” said Laurence, with boyish impatience. “And
I ’m certainly not going to notice you if you ’re silly
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SLIPPY McGEE
enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you won’t be a
fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools.” He
ate another cake.
‘‘Not half as big fools as boys are, though,” said she,
dispassionately. ‘‘My father says the man is always the
bigger fool of the two.”
Laurence snorted. ‘‘I wonder what we ’ll be like,
though — both of us T” he mused.
‘‘Tout You ’re biggity now, but you ’ll be lots worse,
then,” said Mary Virginia, with unflattering frankness.
‘‘I think you ’ll probably strut like a turkey, and you ’ll
be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn spectacles,
and spats, and your wife will call you ‘Mr. Mayne’ to
your face and ‘Your Poppa’ to the children, and she ’ll
perfectly despise people like Madame and the Padre and
me!”
“You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Vir-
ginia,” said Laurence, with brotherly tact. “Our
black cat Panch would put it all over you. Allow me
to inform you I ’m not biggity, miss ! I ’m logical —
something a girl can’t understand. And I ’d like to
know what you think you ’re going to grow up to bet”
“Oh, let ’s quit talking about it,” she said petulantly.
“I hate to think of growing up. Grown ups don't
seem to be happy — and I want to be happy!” She
turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and
watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.
“Weren’t you sorry when you had to stop b^ing a
little boy and grow upt” she asked him, wistfully.
“Met” he laughed harshly. “I couldn’t say, miss.
I guess I was bom grown up.” His face darkened.
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UNDERWINGS 57
“That wasn’t a bit fair,” said she, with instant sym-
pathy.
“There ’s a lot not fair,” he told her, “when yon ’re
born and brought up like I was. The worst is not so
much what happens to you, though that ’s pretty bad ;
it ’s that you don’t know it ’s happening — and there ’s
nobody to put you wise. Why,” his forehead puckered
as if a thought new to him had struck him, “why, your
very looks get to be different!”
Mary Virginia started. “Oh, looks!” said she,
thoughtfully. “Now, isn’t it curious for you to say
just that, right now, for it reminds me that I brought
something to the Padre — something that set me to think-
ing about people’s looks, too, — and how you never can
tell. Wait a minute, and I ’ll show you.” She reached
for the pretty crocheted bag she had brought with her,
and drew from it a small pasteboard box. None of us,
idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate
was upon us. I have often wondered how things would
have turned out if Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten
that pasteboard box !
“I happened to put my hand on a tree — and this little
fellow moved, and I caught him. I thought at first he
was a part of the tree-trunk, he looked so much like it,”
said the child, opening the little box. Inside lay nothing
more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly gray
moth, with his wings folded down.
“One wouldn’t think him pretty, would one!” said
she, looking down at the creature.
“No,” said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned
his neck over the box. ‘ ‘ No, miss, I should n’t think I ’d
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SLIPPY McGEE
call something like that pretty,” — he looked from the
moth to Mary Virginia, a bit disappointedly.
Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth,
held his body, very gently, between her finger-tips. He
fluttered, spreading out his gray wings; and then one
saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and the glorious
lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with
black.
”1 brought him along, thinking the Padre might like
him, and tell me something about him,” said the little
girl. ‘‘The Padre ’s crazy about moths and butterflies,
you must understand, and we ’re always on the lookout
to get them for him. I never found this particular one
before, and you can’t imagine how I felt when he showed
me what he had hidden under that gray cloak of his!”
“He 's a member of a large and most respectable fam-
ily, the Catocalse,” I told her. “I ’ll take him, my dear,
and thank you — there ’s always a demand for the Cato-
calse. And you may call him an Underwing, if you pre-
fer — that ’s his common name.”
“I got to thinking,” ssud the little girl, thoughtfully,
lifting her clew and candid eyes to John Flint’s. “I
got to thinking, when he threw aside his plain gray cloak
and showed me his lovely underwings, that he ’s like
some people — people you ’d think were very common,
you know. You could n’t be expected to know what was
uhdemeath, could you? So you pass them by, thinking
how ordinary, and matter of fact, and uninteresting and
even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for them
— because you don’t know. But if you can once get
close enough to touch them — why, then you find out!”
Her eyes grew deeper, and brighter, as they do when she
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59
is moved; and the color came more vividly to her cheek.
“Don't you reckon,” said she naively, “that plenty of
folks are like himf They 're the sad color of the street-
dust, of course, for things do borrow from their sur-
roundings, didn’t you know that? That 's called pro-
tective mimicry, the Padre says. So you only think of
the dust-colored outside — and all the while the under-
wings are right there, waiting' for you to find them!
Isn’t it wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all
is, it ’s true!”
The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint
of timidity in his manner ; he was staring at Mary Vir-
ginia as if some of the light within her had dimly pene-
trated his grosser substance.
“Could I hold it — for a minute — in my own hand?”
he asked, turning brick-red.
“Of course you may,” said Mary Virginia pleasantly.
“I see by the Padre’s face this isn’t a rare moth — he ’s
been here all along, only my eyes have just been opened
to him. I don’t want him to go in any collection. I
don’t want him to go anywhere, except back into the air
— I owe him that for what he taught me. So I ’m sure
the Padre won’t mind, if you ’d like to set him free,
yourself.”
She put the moth on the man’s finger, delicately, for
a Catocala is a swift-winged little chap; it spread out
its wings splendidly, as if to show him its loveliness ; then,
darting upward, vanished into the cool green depth of
the shrubbery.
“I remember running after a butterfly once, when I
was a kid,” said he. “He came flying down our street,
Lord knows where from or why, and I caught him after
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SLIPPY McGEE
a chase. I thought he was the prettiest thing ever my
eyes had seen, and I wanted the worst way in the world
to keep him with me. A brown fellow he was, all
sprinkled over with little splotches of silver, as if there ’d
been plenty of the stuff on hand, and it ’d been laid
on him thick. But after awhile I got to thinking he ’d
feel like he was in jail, shut up in my hot fist. I
could n’t bear that, so I ran to the end of the street, to
save him from the other kids, and then I turned him
loose and watched him beat it for the sky. They ’re
pretty things, butterflies. Somehow I always liked them
better than any other living creatures. ’ ’ He was stating
after the moth, his forehead wrinkled. He spoke almost
unconsciously, and he certainly had no idea that he had
given us cause for a hopeful astonishment.
Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough,
upon John Flint’s hands lying loosely upon his knees.
Her face brightened.
“Padre,” she suggested suddenly, “why don’t you
let him help you with your butterflies t Look at his
hands ! "Why, they ’re just exactly the right sort to
handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to
stretch wings without loosening a scale. .He could be
taught in a few lessons, and just think what a splendid
help he could be ! And you do so need help with those
insects of yours, Padre — I ’ve heard you say so, over and
over.”
The child was right — John Flint* did have good hands
— large enough, well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful,
with flexible, smooth-skinned, sensitive fingers, the fin-
gers of an expert lapidary rather than a prize-fighter.
“If you think there ’s any way I could help the par*
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UNDERWINGS
61
son for awhile, I ’d be proud to try, miss. It ’s true,”
he added casually, with a sphinx-like immobility of coun-
tenance, “that I ’m what might be called handy with my
fingers.”
“We ’ll call it settled, then,” said Mary Virginia
happily.
Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of Ids
daily life to look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after
a cherished little sister. When they were younger the
boy had often complained that she might as well be his
sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the little
girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he ’d been
a brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her
delicious impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the
boy had adored her, from the time she gurgled at him
from her cradle.
My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors
in the pleasant twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence
had given him.
“Parson,” said he, abruptly, “Parson, you folks are
swells, ain’t youf The real thing, I mean, you and
Madame 1 Even the yellow nigger ’s a lady nigger, ain’t
she?”
“I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame
is — Madame. And C161ie is a good servant.”
“But you were bom a swell, weren’t you?” he per-
sisted. “Old family, swell diggings, trained flunkies,
and all that?”
“I was bom a gentleman, if that is what you mean.
Of an old family, yes. And there was an old house —
once.”
“How ’d you ever hit the trail for the Church? I
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SLIPPY McGEE
wonder! But say, yon never asked me any more ques-
tions than you had to, so you can tell me to shut up, if
you want to. Not that I wouldn’t like to know how
the Sam Hill the like of you ever got nabbed by the
skypilots.”
“God called me through affliction, my son.”
“Oh,” said my son, blankly. “Huh! But I bet you
the best crib ever cracked you were some peach of a boy
before you got that ‘S. O. S.’ ”
“I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a
sinner.”
“I suppose,” said he tentatively, after a pause; “that
1 ’ m one hell of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle,
ain’t I!”
“I do not think it would injure you to change your —
course of life, nor yet your way of mentioning it,” I
said, feeling my way cautiously. “But — we are bidden
to remember there is more joy in heaven over one sinner
saved than over the ninety-and-nine just men.”
“Is that sot Well, it listens like good horse-sense to
me,” said Mr. Flint, promptly. “Because, look here:
you can rake in ninety-and-nine boobs any old time —
there ’s one bom every time the clock ticks, parson —
but they don’t land something like me every day, be-
lieve me ! And I bet you a stack of dollar chips a mile
high there was some song-and-dance in the sky-joint
when they put one over on you for fair. Sure!” He
puffed away at his pipe, and I, having nothing to say
to this fine reasoning, held my peace.
“Parson, that kid ’s a swell, too, ain’t shet And the
boyt”
“Laurence is the son of Judge Hammond Mayne.”
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UNDERWINGS
6 $
“And the little girl?” Insensibly his voice softened.
“I suppose,” I agreed, “that the little girl is what
yon might call a swell, too.”
“I never,” said he, reflectively, “came what you
might call talking close to real swells before. I ’ve seen
’em, of course — at a distance. Some of ’em, taking ’em
by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some of ’em
was middling, and a few looked as if they might have
the goods. Rut none of ’em struck me as being real
live breathing people, same as other folks. Why, par-
son, some of those dames ’d throw a fit, fancying they
was poisoned, if they had to breathe the same air with
folks like me — me being what I am and they being — what
they think they are. Yet here ’s you and Madame, the
real thing — and the boy — and the little girl — the little
girl — ” he stopped, staring at me dumbly, as the vision
of Mary Virginia rose before him.
“She is, indeed, a dear, dear child,” said I. His
words stung me somewhat, for once upon a time, I my-
self would have resented that such as he should have
breathed the same air with Mary Virginia.
“I ’d almost think I ’d dreamed her,” said he,
thoughtfully, “that is, if I was good enough to have
dreams like that,” he added hastily, with his first touch
of shame. “I ’ve seen ’em from the Battery up, and
some of ’em was sure-enough queens, but I didn’t know
they caine like this one. She ’s bran-new to me, parson.
Say, you just show me what she wants me to help you
with, and I ’ll do it. She seems to think I can, and it
oughtn’t to be any harder than opening a time-vault,
ought it?’*
“No,” said I gravely, “I shouldn’t t hink it would
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SLIPPY McGEE
be. Though I never opened a time-vault, yon under-
stand, and I hope and pray you ’ll never touch one
again, either. I ’d rather you wouldn’t even refer to
it, please. It makes me feel, rather — well, let ’s say
particeps crimtnis.”
4 ‘I suppose that ’s the polite for punching you in the
wind,” said he, just as gravely. “ And I didn’t think
you ’d ever monkeyed with a vault; why, you couldn’t,
not if you was to try till Gabriel did his little turn in
the morning — not unless you ’d been caught when you
were softer and put wise. Man, it ’s a bigger job than
you think, and you ’ve got to have the know-how and
the nerve before you can put it over. But there — I ’ll
keep it dark, seeing you want me to.” He stretched
out his hands, regarding them speculatively. “They
are classy mitts,” he remarked impersonally. “Yep,
seemed like they were just naturally lhade to — do what
they did. They were built for fine work.” At that his
jaw snapped ; a spasm twitched his face ; it darkened.
“The work little Miss Eustis suggested for you,” I
insinuated hastily, “is what very many people consider
very fine work indeed. About one in a thousand can
do it properly.”
“Lead me to it,” said he wearily, and without enthusi-
asm, 4 * and turn me loose. I ’ll do what I can, to please
her. At least, until I can make a getaway for keeps.”
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CHAPTER V
ENTER KERRY
W HEN I was first seen prowling along the
roads and about the fields stalking butter-
flies and diurnal moths with the caution of
a red Indian on the warpath and the stealth of a tiger
in the jungle; when mystified folk met me at night, a
lantern suspended from my neck, a haversack across my
shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed with
a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion was that poor
Father De Ranee was stark staring mad. Appleboro
hadn’t heretofore witnessed the proceedings of the
Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient ex-
plaining; even then I am sure I must have left many
firmly convinced that I was not, in their own phrase,
“all there.”
“Hey, you! Mister! Them worms is pizen! • Them ’s
fever-worms!” was shrieked at me frenziedly by the
country-folks, black and white, when I was caught scoop-
ing up the hairy caterpillars of the tiger moths. Even
when it was understood that I wished caterpillars,
cocoons, and chrysalids, for the butterflies and moths
they would later make, looks of pitying contempt were
cast upon me. That a grown man — particularly a min-
ister of the gospel, with not only his own but other peo-
ple ’s souls to save — should spend time hunting for
65
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66 SLIPPY McGEE
worms, with which he couldn’t even bait a hook, awak-
ened amazement.
‘ ‘ What any man in his right mind wants with a thing
that ain’t nothin’ but wriggles an’ hair on the outside
an’ sqnsh on the inside, beats me!” was said more than
once.
“But all of them are interesting, some are valuable,
and many grow into very beautiful moths and butter-
flies,” I ventured to defend myself.
“S’posin’ they dot Yon can’t eat ’em or wear ’em
or plant ’em, can you!” And really, you understand,
I could n’t! '
“An’ you mean to tell me to my face,” said a scan-
dalized farmer, watching me assorting and naming the
specimens taken from my field box, “you mean to tell
me you ’re givin’ every one o’ them bugs a name, same ’s
a baptized Christian! Adam named every livin’ thing,
an’ Adam called them things Caterpillars an’ Butterflies.
If it suited him an’ Eve and God A ’mighty to have ’em
called that an’ nothin’ else, looks to me it had oughter
suit anybody that ’s got a grain o’ real religion. If you
go to call ’em anythin’ else it ’s sinnin’ agin the Bible.
I ’ve heard all my life you CathTics don’t take as much
stock in the Scripters as you ’d oughter, but this thing
o’ callin’ a wurrum Adam named plain Caterpillar a
— a — what ’d you say the dum beast’s name was! My
sufferin’ Savior l is jest about the wust dem foolishness
yet! I lay it at the Pope’s door, every mite o’ it, an’
you ’d better believe he ’ll have to answer for sech car-
rying on, some o’ these days!”
So many other things having been laid at the Pope’s _
door, I held my peace and made no futile attempt to dear
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ENTER KERRY
tn
the Holy Father of the dark suspicion of having per-
petrated their names npon certain of the American
lepidoptera.
I had yet other darker madnesses; had I not been seen
spreading npon trees with a whitewash brush a mixture
of brown sugar, stale beer, and rum 1
Asked to explain this lunatic proceeding I could only
say that I was sugaring for moths; these airy fairy gen-
tlemen having a very human liking for a “wee drappie
o’t.”
“That amiable failin’,” Major Appleby Cartwright
decided, “is a credit to them an’ commends them to a
respectful hearin’. On its face it would seem to admit
them to the ancient an’ honorable brotherhood of con-
vivial man. But, suh, there ’s another side to this ques-
tion, an’ it ’s this: — a creature that ’s got six perfectly
good legs, not to mention wings, an’ still can’t carry his
liquor without bein’ caught, deserves his fate. It ’s not
in my line to offer suggestions to an allwise Providence,
or I might hint that a scoop-net an’ a killing jar in pickle
for some two-legged topers out huntin’ free drinks
would n’t be such a bad idea at all. ”
But as I pursued my buggy way — and displayed, save
in this one particular, what might truthfully be called
ordinary common sense — people gradually grew accus-
tomed to it, looking upon me as a mild and harmless
lunatic whose inoffensive mania might safely be indulged
— nay, even humored. In consequence I was from time
to time inundated with every common thing that creeps,
crawls, and flies. I accepted gifts of bugs and cater-
pillars that filled my mother with disgust and C161ie with
horror; both of them hesitated to come into my study,
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SLIPPY McGEE
and I have known ClUie to be afraid to go to bed of a
night because the great red-homed “Hickory devil” was
downstairs in a box, and she was firmly convinced that
this innocent worm harbored a cold-blooded desire to
crawl upstairs and bite her. That silly woman will de-
part this life in the firm faith that all crawling creatures
came into the world with the single-hearted hope of
biting her, above all other mortals; and that having
achieved the end for which they were created, both they
and she will immediately curl up and die.
But alas, I had but scant time to devote to this en-
chanting and engrossing study, which, properly pursued,
will fill a man’s days to the brim. I gathered my spec-
imens as I could and classified and mounted them as it
pleased God — until the advent of John Flint.
Now, I must, with great reluctance, here set down the
plain truth that he, too, looked upon me at first with
amaze not unmixed with rage and contempt. Most
caterpillars, you understand, feed upon food of their
own arbitrary choosing; and when they are in captivity
one must procure this particular aliment if one hopes
to rear them.
Slippy McGee feeding bugs! It was about as
hideous and devil-bom a contretemps as, say, putting a
belted earl to peel potatoes or asking an archbishop to
clean cuspidors. The man boiled with offended dignity
and outraged pride. One could actually see him swell.
He had expected something quite different, and this ap-
parently offensive triviality disgusted and shocked him.
I could see myself falling forty thousand fathoms in his
esteem, and I think he would have incontinently turned
his bad: upon me save for his promise to Mary Virginia.
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69
It is true that many of the caterpillars are ugly and
formidable, poor things, to the uninitiated eye, which
fails to recognize under this uncomely disguise the
crowned and glorious citizens of the air. I had just then
a great Cecropia, an able-bodied green gentleman armed
with twelve thom-like, sizable horns, and wearing, along
with other agreeable adornments, three yellow and four
red arrangements like growths of dwarf cactus plants
on the segments behind his hard round green head.
Mr. Flint, with an ejaculation of horror, backed off on
one crutch and clubbed the other.
“My God!” said he, “Kill it! Kill it!” I saved
my green friend in the nick of time. The man, with
staring eyes, looked from me to the caterpillar; then
he leaned over and watched it, in grim silence.
He knotted his forehead, made slits of his eyes, gulped,
screwed his mouth into the thin red line of deadly de-
termination, and with every nerve braced, even as a
martyr braces himself for the stake or the sword, put
out his hand, up which the formidable-looking worm
walked leisurely. Death not immediately resulting from
this daring act, he controlled his shudders and breathed
easier. The worm became less and less terrifying; no
longer appearing, say, the size of the boa constrictor.
A few moments of this harmless meandering about Mr.
Flint’s hand and arm, and of a sudden he wore his true
colors of an inoffensive and law-abiding larva, anxious
only to attend strictly td his own legitimate business,
the Gargantuan feeding of himself into the pupa from
which he would presently emerge one of the most mag-
nificent of native moths. Gingerly Mr. Flint picked him
up between thumb and fore-finger, apd as gingerly
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SLIPPY McGEE
dropped him back into the breeding-cage. He squared
his shoulders, wiped his brow, and drew a long whistling
breath.
“Phe-ew! It took all my nerve to do it!” said he,
frankly. ”1 felt for a minute as if a strong-arm cop ’d
chased me up an alley and pulled his gun on me. The
feeling of a bug’s legs on your bare skin is something
fierce at first, ain’t it T But after Atm none of ’em can
scare me any more. I could play tag with pink monkeys
with blue tails and green whiskers without sending in
the hurry-call.”
The setting boards and blocks, the arrays of pins,
needles, tubes, forceps, jars and bottles, magnifying-
glasses, microscope, slides, drying-ovens, relaxing-box,
cabinets, and above all, the mounted specimens, raised
his spirits somewhat. This, at least, looked workman-
like ; this, at least, promised something better than stok-
ing worms !
If not hopefully, at least willingly enough, he allowed
himself to be set to work. And that work had come in
what some like to call the psychological moment. At
least it came — or was sent — just when he needed it
most.
He soon discovered, as all beginners must, that there
is very much more to it than one might think ; that here,
too, one must pay for exact knowledge with painstaking
care and patient study and ceaseless effort. He discov-
ered how fatally easy it is to spoil a good specimen; how
fairy-fragile a wee wing is; how painted scales rub, and
vanish into thin air; how delicate antennas break, and
forelegs will fiendishly depart hence; and that proper
mounting, which results in a perfect insect, is a task
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which requires practice, a sore eye, and an expert,
delicate, and dexterous touch. Also, that one must
be ceaselessly on guard lest the baleful little ant and
other tiny curses evade one’s vigilance and render void
one’s best work. He learned these and other salutary
lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur’s conceit
of his half-knowledge ; and this chastened him. He felt
his pride at stake — he who could so expertly, with almost
demoniac ingenuity, force the costliest and most cun-
ningly constructed burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle
boast was that he was handy with his fingers! Slippy
McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly! And in the
presence of a mere priest and a girl-child! Never!
He ’d show us what he could do when he really tried
to try! >
Presently he wanted to classify; and he wanted to do
it alone and unaided — it looked easy enough. It irked
him, pricked his pride, to have to be always asking some-
body else “what is this!’’ And right then and there
those inevitable difficulties that confront every earnest
and conscientious seeker at the beginning of his quest,
arose, as the fascinating living puzzles presented them-
selves for his solving.
To classify correctly is not something one learns in a
day, be he never so willing and eager; as one may dis-
cover who cares to take half a dozen plain, obscurely-
colored small moths, and attempts to put them in their
proper places.
Mr. Flint tried it — and those wretched creatures
would n’t stay put. It seemed to him that every time
he looked at them they ought to be somewhere else;
always there was something — a bar, a stripe, a small dis-
/
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SLIPPY McGEE
tinctive spot, a wing of peculiar shape, antennae, or
palpi, or spur, to differentiate them.
“Where the Sam Hill,” he blazed, “do all these footy
little devils come from, anyhow ! Where am I to put
a beast of a bug when the next one that ’s exactly like
it is entirely different the next time you look at it!
There ’s too much beginning and no end at all to this
game!”
For all that, he followed them up. I saw with pure
joy that he refused to dismiss anything carelessly, while
he scorned to split hairs. He had a regular course of
procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned the
new insect over and over and glared at it from every
possible angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his
teeth, squared his shoulders and hurled himself into
work.
There was, for instance, the common Dione Vanillae,
that splendid Gulf Fritillary which haunts all the
highways of the South. She ’s a long-wing, but she ’a
not a Heliconian ; she ’s a silver-spot, but she ’s not an
Argynnis. She bears a striking family likeness to her
fine relations, but she has certain structural peculiarities
which differentiate her. Whose word should he take for
this, and why! Wherein lay those differences! He
began, patiently, with her cylinder-shaped yellow-brown,
orange-spotted caterpillar, on the purple passion flowers
in our garden ; he watched it change into a dark-brown
chrysalis marked with a few pale spots; he saw emerge
from this the red-robed lady herself, with her long ful-
vous forewings, and her shorter hind wings smocked
with black velvet, and her under-frock flushed with pink-
ish orange and spangled with silver. And yet, in spite
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of her long marvelous tongue — he was beginning to find
out that no tool he had ever seen, and but few that God
Himself makes, is so wonderful as a butterfly’s tongue —
she had n’t been able to tell him that about herself which
he most wished to find out. That called for a deeper
knowledge than he as yet possessed, \
But he knew that other men knew. And he- had to
know. He meant to know. For the work gripped him
as it does those marked and foreordained for its service.
That marvelous world in which the Little People dwell
— a world so absolutely different from ours that it might
well be upon another planet — began to open, slowly,
slowly, one of its many mysterious doors, allowing him
just glimpse enough of what magic lay beyond to fire
his heart and to whet his appetite. And he couldn’t
break into that world with a jimmy. It was burglar^
proof. That portal was so impervious to even the facile
fingers of Slippy McGee, that John Flint must pay the
inevitable and appropriate toll to enter!
Westmoreland had replaced his crutches with a
wooden leg, and you might see him stumping about our
grounds, minutely examining the underside of shrubs
and bushes, the bark of trees, poking into comers and
crannies, or scraping in the mold under the fallen leaves
by the fences, for things which no longer filled him with
aversion and disgust, but with the student’s interest and
pleasure.
‘’Think of me being in the same world with ’em all
these years and not knowing a thing about ’em when
there ’s so much to know, and under my skin stark
crazy to learn it, only I didn’t know I even wanted to
know what I really want to know more than anything
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SLIPPY McGEE
else, until I had to get dumped down here to find it out!
I get the funniest sort of a feeling, parson, that all along
there ’s been a Me tucked away inside my hide that ’s
been loving these things ever since I was born. Not
just to catch and handle ’em, and stretch out their little
wings, and remember the names some bughouse high-
brow wished on ’em, though all that ’s in the feeling,
too ; it ’s something else, if I could make you understand
what I mean.”
I laughed. “I think I do understand,” said I. “I
have a Me like that tucked away in mine, too, you know.”
He looked at me gravely. “Parson,” said he, ear-
nestly, “there ’s times I wish you had a dozen kids, and
every one of ’em twins ! It ’s a shame to think of some
poor orphans swindled out of such a daddy as you ’d
have made!”
“'Why,” said I, smiling, “You are one of my twins.”
“Met” He reflected. “Maybe half of me might be,
parson,” he agreed, “but it ’s not safe for a skypilot
to be caught owning a twin like the other half.”
“I ’m pinning my faith to my half,” said I, serenely.
“Now, why!” he asked, with sudden fierceness. “I
turn it over and over and over : it looks white on the out-
side, but I can’t to save me figure out why you ’re doing
IfT Parson, what have you got up your sleeve!”
“Nothing but my arm. What should you think!”
“I don’t know what to think, and that ’s the straight
of it. What ’s your game, anyhow! What in the name
of God are you after!”
“Why, I think,” said I, “that in the name of God I ’m
after — that otljer You that ’s been tucked away all these
years, and could n’t get born until a Me inside mine, just
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75
like himself, called him to come oat and be alive.”
He pondered this in silence. Then:
“I ’ll take your word for it,” said he. “Though if
anybody ’d ever told me I ’d be eating out of a parson’s
hand, I ’d have pushed his face in for him. Yep, I ’m
Fido! Mel”
“At least you growl enough,” said I, tartly.
He eyed me askance.
“Have I got to lick hands?” he snarled.
I walked away, without a reply ; through my shoulder-
blades I could feel him glaring after me. He followed,
hobbling :
“Parson!”
“Well?”
“If I ’m not the sort that licks hands I ’m not the sort
that bites ’em, neither. I ’ll tell you — it ’s this way
I — sort of get to chewing on that infernal log of wood
that ’s where my good leg used to grow and — and
splinters get into my temper — and I ’ve got to snarl or
burst wide open ! You ’d growl like the devil yourself,
if you had to try holding down my job for awhile, sky-
pilot or no skypilot!”
“Why — I dare say I should,” said I, contritely.
“But,” I added, after a pause, “I shouldn’t be any the
better for it, should you think?” ,
“Not so you could notice,” shortly. And after a
moment he added, in an altered voice: “Rule 1: Can
the Squeal!”
I think he most honestly tried to. It was no easy task,
and I have seen the sweat start upon his forehead
and his face go pale, when in his eagerness he for-
got for a moment the cruel fact that he could no longer
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SLIPPY McGEE
move as lightly as of old — and the crippled body, be-
traying him, reminded him all too swiftly of his mistake.
The work saved him. For it is the heaven-sent sort of
work, to those ordained for it, that fills one’s hours and
leaves one eager for further tasks. It called for all his
oldtime ingenuity. His tools, for instance — at times
their limitations irked him, and he made others more
satisfactory to himself; tools adjusted to an insect’s frail
body, not to a time-lock. Before that summer ended he
could handle even the frailest and tiniest specimen with
such nice care that it was delightful to watch him at
work. The time was to come when he could mend a tom
wing or fix a broken antennas with such exquisite fidelity
to detail that even the most expert eye might well be
deceived. N
I had only looked for a little temporary help, such as
any intelligent amateur might be able to furnish. But
I was not long unaware that this was more than a mere
amateur. To quote himself, he had the goods, and I
realized with a mounting heart that I had made a find,
if I could only hold on to it. ' For the first time in years
I could exchange specimens. My cabinets began to fill
out — with such perfect insects, too! We added several
rare ones, a circumstance to make any entomologist look
upon the world through rosy spectacles. Why, even the
scarce shy Cossus Centerensis came to our very doors, ap-
parently to fill a space awaiting him. Perhaps he was
a Buddhist insect undergoing reincarnation, and was
anxious to acquire merit by self-immolation. Anyhow,
we acquired him, and I hope he acquired merit.
We had scores of insects in the drying ovens. We had
more and ever more in the breeding cages, — in our case
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simple home-made affairs of a keg or a box with a fine
wire-netting over the food plant; or a lamp-chimney
slipped over a potted plant with a bit of mosquito-net-
ting tied over the top, for the smaller forms.
These cages were a never-failing source of delight and
interest to the children, and at their hands heaven rained
caterpillars upon us that season. Even my mother grew
interested in the work, though C161ie never ceased to look
upon it as a horrid madness peculiar to white people.
“All Buckrahs is funny in dey haids,” Daddy Jan-
uary consoled her when she complained to him about it.
“Dey gets all kind o’ fool notions ’bout all kind o’ fool
t’ings. You ain’t got to feel so bad — de Jedge is lots
wuss’n yo’ boss is. Yo’ boss kin see -de bugs he run
atter, but my boss talk ’bout some kind o’ bug he call
Qerm. I ax um what kind o’ bug is dat; an’ he ’low
you can’t see um wid yo’ eye. I ain’t say so to de
Jedge, but I low when you see bug you can’t see wid
yo’ eye, you best not seem um ’tall — case he must be
some kind o’ spook, an’ Gawd knows I ain’t want to see
no spook. Ef de bug ain’t no spook, den he mus’ be
eenside yo’ haid, ’stead o’ outside um, an’ to hab bug
on de eenside o’ yo’ haid is de wuss kind o’ bad luck.
Anyhow, nobody but Buckrah talk an’ ack like dat, nig-
gers is got mo’ sense.’’
We found, presently, a ready and a steady sale for our
extra stock. We could supply caterpillars, butterflies
and moths, or chrysalids and cocoons ; we had some rather
scarce ones; and then, our unmounted specimens were
so perfect, and our mounted ones so exquisitely done,
that we had but little trouble in disposing of them.
Under the hand of John« Flint these last were really
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SLIPPY McGEE
works of art. Not for nothing had he boasted that he
was handy with his fingers.
The pretty common forms, framed hovering lifelike
over delicately pressed ferns and flowers, found even a
readier market, for they were really beautiful. Money
had begun to come in — not largely, it is true, but still
steadily and surely. You must know how to handle your
stock, and you must be in touch with your market —
scientists, students, collectors, — and this, of course, takes
time. We could supply the larger dealers, too, although
they pay less, and we had a modest advertisement in one
or two papers published for the profession, which
brought us orders. But let no one imagine that it is an
easy task to handle these frail bodies, these gossamer
wings, so that naturalists and collectors are glad to get
them. Once or twice we lost valuable shipments.
Long since — in the late spring, to be exact, John Flint
had moved out of the Guest Boom, needed for other oc-
cupants, into a two-roomed outbuilding across the gar-
den. Some former pastor had had it built for an oratory
and retreat, but now, covered with vines, it had stood
for many years unused, save as a sort of lumber room.
When the troublesome question of where we might
properly house him had arisen, my mother hit upon these
unused rooms as by direct inspiration. She had them
cleaned, repainted, scoured, and turned into a pleasant
well-lighted, airy workroom and living-room combined,
and a smaller and rather austere bedroom, with an in-
expensive but very good head of Christ over the mantel,
and an old, old carved crucifix on the wall beside the
white iron bed. Laurence took from his own room a
Morris chair, whose somewhat frayed cushions my
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mother neatly re-covered. Mary Virginia contributed a
rug, as well as dressing-gown and slippers. Miss Sally
Rath gave him outright a brand-new Bible, and loaned
him an old cedar-wood wardrobe which had been her
great-grandmother’s, and which still smelt delicately of
generations of rose-leaved and lavendered linen.
“All 1 ask,” said Miss Sally Ruth sharply, “is that
you 11 read Paul with your eyes open and your mouth
shut, and that you 11 keep your clothes in that wardrobe
and your moths out of it. If it Was intended for any-
body to teach you anything, then Paul will teach you ; but
it wasn't intended for a cedar-wood wardrobe to hold
moths, and I hope you won’t forget it!”
Major Cartwright sent over a fishing-rod, a large jar
of tobacco, and a framed picture of General Lee.
“Because no man, suh, could live under the same roof
with even his pictured semblance, and not be the bettah
fo’ it,” said the major earnestly. “I know. I ’ve got
to live with him myself. When I 'm fair to middlin’
he ’s in the dinin’ room. When I ’ve skidded off the
straight an’ narrow path I lock him up in the parlor,
an’ at such times I sleep out on the po’ch. But when
I ’m at peace with man an’ God I take him into my bed-
room an’ look at him befo’ retirin’. He ’s about as easy
to live with as the Angel Gabriel, but he ’s mighty
bracin’, Marse Robert is: mighty bracin’!”
Thus equipped, John Flint settled himself in his own
house. It had been a wise move, for he had the sense
of proprietorship, privacy, and freedom. He could come
and go as he pleased, with no one to question. He could
work undisturbed, save for the children who brought him
such things as they could find. He put his breeding
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SLIPPY McGEE
cages out on the vine-covered piazzas surrounding two
sides of his bouse, arranged the cabinets and boxes which
had been removed from my study to his own, nailed up
a few shelves to suit himself, and set up housekeeping.
My mother had been frankly delighted to have my
creeping friends moved out of the Parish House, and
Clelie abated in her dislike of the one-legged man be-
cause he had, in a way, removed from her a heretofore
never-absent fear of waking up some night and finding
a caterpillar under her bed. More yet, he entailed no
extra work, for he flatly refused to have her set foot in
his rooms for the purpose of cleaning them. He attended
to that himself. The man was a marvel of neatness and
order. Mesdames, permit me to here remark that when
a man is neat and orderly no woman of Eve’s daughters
can compare with him. J ohn Flint ’s rooms would arouse
the rabid envy of the cleanest and most scourful she in
Holland itself.
Now as the months wore away there had sprung up
between him, and Mary Virginia and Laurence, one of
those odd comradely friendships which sometime unite
the totally unlike with bonds hard to break. His spot-
less workroom had a fascination for the youngsters.
They were always in and out, now with a cocoon, now
an imago, now a larva, and then again to see how those
they had already brought were getting along.
The lame man was an unrivaled listener — a circum-
stance which endeared him to youthful Laurence, in
whom thoughts and the urge to express these thoughts in
words rose like sap. This fresh and untainted confi-
dence, poured out so naively, taught John Flint more
than any words or prayers of mine could have done. It
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opened to hi™ a world into which his eyes had not here*
tofore been permitted to look; and the result was all
the more sure and certain, in that the children had no
faintest idea of the effect they were producing. They
had no end to gain, no ax to grind; they merely spoke
the truth as they knew it, and this unselfish and hopeful
truthfulness aroused his interest and curiosity; it even
compelled his admiration. He couldn’t dismiss this as
“hotair”!
1 was more than glad to have him thus taught. It
Was a salutary lesson, tending to temper his overweening
confidence and to humble his contemptuous pride. In
his own world he had been supreme, a figure of sinister
importance. Brash had been crook or cop who had
taught or caught Slippy McGee! But in this new at-
mosphere, in which he breathed with difficulty, the young
had been given him for guides. They led him, where
a grownup had failed.
Mary Virginia was particularly fond of him. He had
as little to say to her as to Laurence, but he looked at
her with interested eyes that never lost a movement;
she knew he never missed a word, either ; his silence was
friendly, and the little girl had a pleasant fashion of
taking folk for granted. Hers was one of those large
natures which give lavishly, shares itself freely, but does
not demand much in return. She gave with an open
hand to her quiet listener — her books, her music, her
amusing and innocent views, her frank comments, her
truthfulness, her sweet brave gaiety; and he absorbed
it like a sponge. It delighted her to find and bring the
proper food-plants for his cages. And she being me of
those who sing while they work, you might hoar her
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SLIPPY MoGEE
caroling like a lark, flitting about the old garden with
her red setter Kerry at her heels.
Laurence no longer read aloud to him, but instead gave
Flint such books as he could find covering his particular
study, and these were devoured and pored over, and
more begged for. Flint would go without new clothes,
neat as he was, and without tobacco, much as he liked
to smoke, — to buy books upon lepidoptera.
He helped my mother with her flowers and her vege-
tables, but refused to have anything to do with her
chickens, remarking shortly that hens were such fools
he could n’t help hating them. Madame said she liked
to have him around, for he was more like some unob-
trusive jinnee than a mere mortal. She declared that
John Flint had what the negroes call a “growing hand’’
— he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and
it grew like Jonah’s gourd.
Since he, had begun to hobble about, he had gradually
come to be accepted by the town in general. They looked
upon him as one who shared Father De Ranee’s madness,
a tramp who was a hunter of bugs. It explained his
presence in the Parish House ; I fancy it also explained
to some why he had been a tramp !
Folks got used to him, as one does to anything one
sees daily. The pleasant conservative soft-voiced ladies
who liked to call on Madame of an afternoon and gossip
Christianly, and drink tea and eat Clelie’s little cakes
on our broad shady verandah, only glanced casually at
the bent head and shoulders visible through the screened
window across the garden. They said he was very in-
teresting, of course, but painfully shy and bashful. As
for him. he was as horribly afraid of them as they would
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have been of him, bad they known. I could not always
save myself from the sin of smiling at an ironic situation.
Judge Mayne had at first eyed the man askance, watch-
ing him as his own cats might an interloping stray dog.
“The fellow ’s not very prepossessing,'* he told me, of
an evening when he had dined with us, “but I 've been
on the bench long enough to be skeptical of any fixed
good or bad type — I 've found that the criminal type is
any type that goes wrong; so I shouldn’t go so far as
to call this chap a bad egg. But— I hope you are reason-
ably sure of him, father!”
“Reasonably,” said I, composedly.
“Laurence tells me Madame and Mary Virginia like
the fellow. H’m! Well, I 've acquired 4 little faith
in the intuition of women — some women, understand, and
' some times. And mark you, I didn’t say judgment.
Let us hope that this is one of the times when faith in
intuition will be justified.”
Later, when he had had time to -examine the work
progressing under the flexible fingers of the silent work-
man, he withdrew with more respect.
“I suppose he ’s all right, if you think so, father.
But I ’d watch out for him, anyway,” he advised.
“That is exactly what I intend to do.”
“Rather he fell into your hands than mine. Better
for him,” said the judge, briefly. Then he launched
into an intimate talk of Laurence, and in thus talking of
the boy’s future, forgot my helper.
That was it, exactly. The man was so unobtrusive
without in the least being furtive. Had so little to say;
attended so strictly to his own business, and showed him-
self so utterly and almost inhumanly uninterested in
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SLIPPY McGEE
anybody else’s, that he kept in the background. He
was there, and people knew it; they were, in a sense,
interested in him, but not curious about him.
One morning in early autumn — he had been with us
then some eight or nine months — I went over to his rooms
with a New York newspaper in my hand. It had news
that set my heart to pounding sickeningly — news that
at once simplified and yet complicated matters. I hesi-
tated as to whether or not I should tell him, but decided
that whatever effect that news might produce, I would
deal with him openly, above board, and always with
truth. He must act and judge for himself and with his
eyes open. On my part there should be no concealment.
The paper stated that the body of a man found float-
ing in the East River had been positively identified by
the police as that of Slippy McGee. That the noted
crook had gotten back into New York through the cun-
ning dragnet so carefully spread for him was another
proof of his daring and dexterity. How he met the dark
fate which set him adrift, battered and dreadful, in the
East River, was another of those underworld crimes
that remain unsolved. Cunning and dangerous, .mys-
terious in his life, baffling all efforts to get at him, he
was as evilly mysterious in his death. There was only
one thing sure — that this dead wretch with the marks
of violence upon him was Slippy McGee; and since his
breath had ceased, the authorities could breathe easier.
He read it deliberately ; then re-read it, and sat and
stared at the paper. A slow grim smile came to his lips,
and he took his chin in his hand, musingly. The eyes
narrowed, the face darkened, the jaw thrust itself for-
ward.
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86
“Dead, huh}” he grunted, and stared about him, with
a slow, twisting movement of the head. “Well — I might
just as well be, as buried alive in a jay-dump at the tail-
end of all creation 1” Once again the Powers of Dark-
ness swooped down and wrestled with and for him ; and
knowing what I knew, sick at heart, I trembled for him.
“What am I doing here, anyhow t” he snarled with
his lips drawn back from his teeth. “Piddling with
bugs — Met Patching up their dinky Jittle wings and
stretching out their dam’ little legs and feelers — me being
what I am, and they being what they are ! Say, I ’ve got
to quit this, once for all I ’ve got to quit it. I ’m not a
man any more. I ’m a dead one, a he-granny cutting
silo for lady-worms and drynursing their interesting lit-
tle babies. My Godl Mel” And he threw his hands
above his head with a gesture of rage and despair.
“Hanging on here like a boob — no wonder they think
I ’m dead ! If I could just make a getaway and pull off
one more good job and land enough — ”
“You couldn’t keep it, if you did land it — your sort
can’t. You know how it went before — the women and'
the sharks got it. There ’d be always that same in-
centive to pull off just one more to keep you going — until
you ’d pulled yourself behind bars, and stayed there.
And there ’s the drug-danger, too. If you escaped so
far, it was because so far you had the strength to let
drugs alone. But the drugs get you, sooner or later, do
they nott Have you not told me over and over again
that ‘nearly all dips are dopes’? That first the dope
gets you — and then the law? No. You can’t pull off
anything that won’t pull you into hell. We have gone
over this thing often enough, haven’t we?”
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SLIPPY McGEE
“No, we haven't. And I haven’t had a chance to
pull off anything — except leaves for bugs. Me! I want
to get my hand in once more, I tell you ! I want to pull
off a stunt that ’ll make the whole bunch of bulls sit up
and bellow for fair — and I can do it, easy as easy. Think
I ’ve croaked, do theyt And they can all snooze on
their peg-posts, now I ’m a stiff! Well, by cripes, I
just want half of a half of a chance, and 1 11 show ’em
Slippy McGee 's good and plenty alive!”
“Come out into the garden, my son, and feel that you
are good and plenty alive. Come out into the free air.
Hold on tight, a little while longer!”
I laid my hand upon his shoulder compellingly, and
although he glared at me, and ground his teeth, and
lifted his lip, he came ; unwillingly, swearing under his
breath, he came. We tramped up and down the garden
paths, up and down, and back again, his wooden peg
making a round hole, like a hoofmark, in the earth. He
stared down at it, spat savagely upon it, and swore hor-
ribly, but not too loudly.
“I want to feel like a live man ! ” he gritted. “A live
man, not a one-legged mucker with a beard like a Dutch
bomb-thrower’s, puttering about a skypilot’s backyard
on the wrong side of everything!”
“Stick it out a little longer, John Flint; hold fast!”
“Hold fast to what!” he demanded savagely. “To
a bug stuck on a needle!”
“Yes. And to me who trusts you. To Madame who
likes you. To the dear child who put bug and needle
into your hand because she knew it was good work and
trusted your hand to do it. And more than all, to that
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ENTER KERRY 87
other Me you ’re finding — your own true self, John
Flint! Hold fast, hpld fast!”
He stopped and stared at me.
‘‘I ’m believing him again!” said he, . grievously.
”1 ’ve been sat on while I was hot, and my number ’a
marked on me, 23. I ’m hoodooed, that ’s what!”
Tramp, tramp, stomp, stump, up and down, the two
of us.
“All right, devil-dodger,” said he wearily, after a long
sullen silence. “I ’ll stick it out a bit longer, to please
you. You ’ve been white — the lot of you. But look
here — if I beat it some night . . . with what I can find,
why, I ’m warning you: don’t blame me — you ’re run-
ning your risks, and it ’ll be up to you to explain!”
“When you want to go, John Flint — when you really
and truly want to go, why, take anything I have that
you may fancy, my son. I give it you beforehand.”
“I don’t want anything given to me beforehand!” he
growled. “I want to take what I want to take without
anybody’s leave!”
“Very well, then; take what you want to take/ with-
out anybody’s leave! I shall be able to do without it,
I dare say.”
He turned upon me furiously:
“Oh, yes, I guess you can ! You ’d do without eating
and breathing too, 1 suppose, if you could manage it!
You do without too blamed much right now, trying to
beat yourself to being a saint ! Of course I ’d help my-
self and leave you to go without — you ’re enough to
'make a man ache to shoot some sense into you with a
cannon ! And for God’s sake, who are you pinching and
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SLIPPY McGEE
scraping and going without fort A bunch of hickey
factory-shuckers that have n’t got sense enough to talk
American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on ’em
like bone buttons ! They ain’t worth it. While I ’m in
the humor, take it from me there ain’t anybody worth
anything anyhow!”
“Oh, Mr. Flint! What a shame and a sin!” called
another voice. “Oh, Mr. Flint, I ’m ashamed of you!”
There in the freedom of the Saturday morning sunlight
stood Mary Virginia, her red Irish setter Kerry beside
her.
“I came over,” said she, “to see how the baby-moths
are getting on this morning, and to know if the last hairy
gentleman I brought spins into a cocoon or buries him-
self in the ground. And then I heard Mr. Flint — and
what he said is unkind, and untrue, and not a bit like
him. Why, everybody ’s worth everything you can do
for them — only some are worth more.”
The wild wrath died out of his face. As usual, he
softened at sight of her.
“Oh, well, miss, I wasn’t thinking of the like of you
« — and him,” he jerked his head at me, half apologetically,
“nor young Mayne, nor the little Madame. You ’re dif-
ferent.”
“Why, no, we aren’t, really,” said Mary Virginia,
puckering her brows adorably. “We only seem to be
different — but we are just exactly like everybody else,
only we know it, and some people never can seem to find
it out — and there ’s the difference! Yon seet” That
was the befuddled manner in which Mary Virginia very
often explained things. If God was good to you, you
got a little glimmer of what she meant and was trying
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ENTER KERRY
89
to tell yon. Mary Virginia often talked as the alchem-
ists used to write — cryptically, abstrusely, as if to hide
the golden truth from all but the initiate.
“Come and shake hands with Mr. Flint, Kerry,’' said
she to the setter. “I want you to help make him under-
stand things it ’s high time he should know. Nobody
can do that better than a good dog can.”
Kerry looked a trifle doubtful, but having been told
to do a certain thing, he obeyed, as a good dog does.
Gravely he sat up and held out an obedient paw, which
the man took mechanically. But meeting the clear hazel
eyes, he dropped his hand upon the shining head with
the gesture of one who desires to become friends. Ac-
cepting this, Kerry reached up a nose and nuzzled.
Then he wagged his plumy tail.
“There!” said Mary Virginia, delightedly. “Now,
don’t you see how horrid it was to talk the way you
talked? Why, Kerry likes you, and Kerry is a sensible
dog.”
“Yes, miss,” and he looked at Mary Virginia very
much as the dog did, trustingly, but a little bewildered.
“Aren’t you sorry you said that?”
“Y-e-s, seeing you seem to think it was wrong.”
“Well, you ’ll know better from now on,” said Mary
Virginia, comfortingly. .She looked at him searchingly
for a minute, and he met her look without flinching.
That had been the one hopeful sign, from the first — that
he never refused to meet your glance, but gave you baek
one just as steady, if more suspicious.
“Mr. Flint,” said Mary Virginia, “you ’ve about
made up your mind to stay on here with the Padre,
haven’t you? For a good long while, at any rate?
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SLIPPY McGEE
You wouldn’t like to leave the Padre, would you?”
He stiffened. One could see the struggle within him.
“Well, miss, I can’t see but that I ’ve just got to stay
on — for awhile. Until he ’s tired of me and my ways,
anyhow,’’ he said gloomily.
Mary Virginia dismissed my tiredness with an airy
wave of her hand. She smiled.
“Do you know,’’ said she earnestly, “I ’ve had the
funniest idea about you, from the very first time I saw
you! Well, I have. I ’ve somehow got the notion that
you and the Padre belong . I think that ’s why you
came. I think you belong right here, in that darling
little house, studying butterflies and mounting them so
beautifully they look alive. I think you ’re never going
to go away anywhere any more, but that you ’re going
to stay right here as long as you live !”
His face turned an ugly white, and his mouth fell
open. He looked at Mary Virginia almost with horror —
Saul might have looked thus at the Witch of Endor when
she summoned the shade of Samuel to tell him that the
kingdom had been rent from his hand and his fate was
upon him.
Mary Virginia nodded, thoughtfully.
“I feel so sure of it,” said she, confidently, “that I ’m
going to ask you to do me a favor. I want you to take
care of Kerry for me. You know I ’m going away to
school next week, and — he can’t stay at home when I ’m
not there. My father ’s away frequently, and he
couldn’t take Kerry about with him, of course. And
he couldn’t be left with the servants — somehow he
doesn’t like the colored people. He always growls at
them, and they ’re afraid of him. And my mother dis-
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91
likes dogs intensely — she ’s afraid of them, except those
horrible little toy-things that aren’t dogs any more.”
The scorn of the real dog-lover was in her voice.
‘‘Kerry ’s used to the Parish House. He loves the
Padre, he ’ll soon love you, and he likes to play with
Pitache, so Madame would n’t mind his being here. And
— I ’d be more satisfied in my mind if he were with
somebody that — that needed him — and would like him
a whole lot — somebody like you,” she finished.
Now, Mary Virginia regarded Kerry even as the apple
of her eye. The dog was a noble and beautiful specimen
of his race, thoroughbred to the bone, a fine field dog,
and the pride of the child’s heart. He was what only
that most delightful of dogs, a thoroughbred Irish setter,
can be. John Flint gasped. Something perplexed, in-
credulous, painful, dazzled, crept into his face and looked
out of his eyes.
“Met” he gasped. ‘‘You mean you ’re willing to let
me keep you^ dog for you? Yours f”
‘‘I want to give him to you,” said Mary Virginia
bravely enough, though her voice trembled. “I am per-
fectly sure you ’ll love him — better than any one else in
the world would, except me myself. I don’t know why
I know that, but I do know it. If you wanted to go
away, later on, why, you could turn him over to the
Padre, because of course you would n’t want to have a
dog following you about everywhere. They ’re a lot of
bother. But — somehow, I think you ’ll keep him- I
think you ’ll love him. He — he ’s a darling dog.” She
was too proud to turn her head aside, but two large tears
rolled down her cheeks, like dew upon a rose.
John Flint stood stock-still, looking from her to the
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SLIPPY McGEE
dog, and back again. Kerry, sensing that something was
wrong with his little mistress, pawed her skirts and
whined.
“Now I come to think of it,” said John Flint slowly,
“I never had anything — anything alive, I mean — belong
to me before.”
Mary Virginia glanced up at him shrewdly, and smiled
through her tears. Her smile makes a funny delicious
red V of her lower lip, and is altogether adorable and
seductive.
“That ’s just exactly why you thought nobody was
worth anything,” she said. Then she bent over her dog
and kissed him between his beautiful hazel eyes.
“Kerry, dear,” said she, “Kerry, dear Kerry, you
don’t belong to me any more. I — I ’ve got to go away
to school — and you know you wouldn’t be happy at
home without me. You belong to Mr. Flint now, and
I ’m sure he needs you, and I know he ’ll love you almost
as much as I do, and he ’ll be very, very good to you.
So you ’re to stay with him, and — stand by him and be
his dog, like you were mine. You ’ll remember, Kerry ?
Good-by, my dear, dear, darling dog!” She kissed him
again, patted him, and thrust his collar into his new
owner’s hand.
“Go — good-by, everybody!” said she, in a muffled
voice, and ran. I think she would have cried childishly
in another moment ; and she was trying hard to remem-
, ber that she was growing up !
John Flint stood staring after her, his hand on the
dog’s collar, holding him in. His face was still without
a vestige of color, and his eyes glittered. Then his other
hand crept out to touch the dog’s head.
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93
“It ’s wet — where she dropped tears on it! Parson
. . . she ’s given me her dog . . . that she loves enough
to cry over! ,,
“He ’ s a very fine dog, and she has had him and loved
him from his puppyhood,” I reminded him. And I
added, with a wily tohgue : “You can always turn him
over to me, you know — if you decide to take to the road
and wish to get rid of a troublesome companion. A
dog is bad company for a man who wishes to dodge the
police.”
But he only shook his head. His eyes were troubled,
and his forehead wrinkled.
“Parson,” said he, hesitatingly, “did you ever feel
like you ’d been caught by — by Something reaching down
out of the dark! Something big that you couldn’t see
and couldn’t ever hope to get away from, because it ’s
always on the job? Ain’t it a hell of a feeling?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I ’ve felt— caught by that Some-
thing, too. And it is at first a terrifying sensation.
Until — you learn to be glad. ”
“You ’re caught — and you know under your hat
you ’re never going to be able to get away any more.
It ’ll hold you till you die!” said he, a little wildly.
“My God! I ’m caught! First It bit off a leg on me,
so I couldn’t run. Then It wished you and your bugs
on me. And now — Yes, sir; I ’m done for. That
kid got my goat this morning. My God, who ’d believe
it ? But it ’s true : I ’m done for. She gave me her dog
and she got my goat!”
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CHAPTER YI
“thy sebvant will go and fight with this
philistine”
1 Sam. 17 : 32.
M ARY VIRGINIA had gone, weeping and be-
wept, and the spirit of youth seemed to have
gone with her, leaving the Parish House
darkened because of its absence. A sorrowful quiet
brooded pver the garden that no longer echoed a caroling
voice. Kerry, seeking vainly for the little mistress,
would come whining back to John Flint, and look up
mutely into his face; and finding no promise there, lie
» down, whimpering, at his feet. The man seemed as deso-
late as the dog, because of the child’s departure.
“When I come back,” Mary Virginia said to him at
parting, “I expect you ’ll know more about moths and
butterflies than anybody else in the world does. You ’re
that sort. I ’d love to be here, watching you grow up
into it, but I ’ve got to go away and grow up into some-
thing myself. I ’m very glad you came here, Mr. Flint.
You ’ve helped me, lots.”
“Met” with husky astonishment.
“You, of course,” said the child, serenely. “Because
you are such a good man, Mr. Flint, and so patient, and
you stick at what you try to do until you do it better than
anybody else does. Often and often when I ’ve been
trying to do sums — I ’m frightfully stupid about arith-
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 96
metic — and I wanted to give np, I ’d think of you over
here just trying and trying and keeping right on trying,
until you ’d gotten what you wanted to know ; and then
I ’d keep on trying, too. The fanny part is, that I like
you for making me do it. You see, I ’m a very, very
bad person in some things, Mr. Flint,” she said frankly.
“Why, when my mother has to tell me to look at so and
so, and see how well they behave, or how nicely they can
' do certain things, and how good they are, and why don’t
I profit by such a good example, a perfectly horrid
raging sort of feeling comes all over me, and I want to
be as naughty as naughty! I feel like doing and saying
things I ’d never want to do or say, if it was n’t for that
good example. I just can’t seem to bear being good-ex-
ampled. But you ’re different, thank goodness. Most
really good people are different, I guess.”
He looked at her, dumbly — he had no words at his
command. She missed the irony and the tragedy, but
she sensed the depths of feeling under that mute exterior.
“I ’m glad you ’re sorry I ’m going away,” said she,
with the directness that was so engaging. “I perfectly
love people to feel sorry to part with me. I hope and
hope they 11 keep on being sorry — because they ’ll be
that much gladder when I come back. I don’t believe
there ’s anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as
having other folks like you, except it ’s liking other folks
yourself I”
“I never had to be bothered about it, either way,”
said he dryly. His face twitched.
“Maybe that ’s because you never stayed still long
enough in any one place to catch hold,” said she, and
laughed at him.
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SLIPPY McGEE
“Good-by, Mr. Flint! I ’ll never see a butterfly or a
moth, the whole time 1 ’m gone, without making believe
he ’s a messenger from Madame, and the Padre, and
you, and Kerry. I ’ll play he ’s a carrier-butterfly,
with a message tlicked away under his wings: ‘Howdy,
Mary Virginia ! I ’ve just come from flying over the
flowers in the Parish House garden ; and the folks are
all well, and busy, and happy. But they have n’t for-
gotten you for a single solitary minute, and they miss
you and wish you ’d come back; and they send you their
dear, dear love — and I ’ll carry your dear, dear love back
to them!’ So if you see a big, big, beautiful, strange
fellow come sailing by your window some morning, why,
that ’s mine, Mr. Flint! Remember!”
And then she was gone, and he had his first taste of
unselfish human sorrow. Heretofore his worries had
been purely personal and self-centered: this was dif-
ferent, and innocent. It shocked and terrified him to
find out how intensely he could miss another being, and
that being a mere child. He wasn’t used to that sort
of pain, and it bewildered him.
Eustis himself had wanted the little girl sent to a
preparatory school which would fit her for one of the
women’s colleges. He had visions of the forward sweep
of women — visions which his wife didn’t share. Her
daughter should go to the Church School at which she
herself had been educated, an exclusive and expensive
institution where the daughters of the wealthy were
given a finishing hand-polish with ecclesiastical emery,
as a sort of social hall-mark. Mrs. Eustis had a horror
of what she called, in quotation-marks, the modem non-
religious method of educating young ladies.
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 97
The Enstis house was closed* and left in charge of the
negro caretakers, for Mrs. Eustis couldn’t stand the
loneliness of .the place after the child’s departure, and
Eustis himself found his presence more and more neces-
sary at the great plantation he was building up. Mrs.
Eustis left Appleboro, and my mother missed her.
There was a vein of pure gold underlying the placid
little woman’s character, which the stronger woman
divined and built upon.
Laurence, too, entered college that Fall. I had
coached him, in such hours as I could spare. He was
conscientious enough, though his Greek was not the
Greek of Homer and he vexed the soul of my mother
With a French she said was spoke
\
full fair and fetisly
After ye schole of Strattford atte Bowe.
But if he had .n’t Mary Virginia’s sensitiveness to all
beauty, nor her playful fancy and vivid imagination,
he was clear-brained and clean-thinking, with- that
large perspective and that practical optimism which
seem to me so essentially American. He saw without
confusion both the thing as it was and as it could be-
come. With only enough humor to save him, he had a
sternness more of the puritan than of the cavalier blood
from which he had sprung. Above all was he informed
with that new spirit brooding upon the face of all the
waters, a spirit that for want of a better name one might
call the Race Conscience.
It was this last aspect of the boy’s character that
amazed and interested John Flint, who was himself too
shrewd not to divine the sincerity, even the common-
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SLIPPY McOES
sense, of what Laurence called “applied Christianity.’*
Altruism — and Slippy McGee ! He listened with a
puzzled wonder.
“I wish,” he grumbled ,to Laurence, “that you ’d
come off the roof. It gives a fellow stiff neck rubbering
up at you!”
“I ’d rather stay up — the air ’s better, and you can
see so much farther,” said Laurence. And he added
hospitably: “There’s plenty of room — come on up,
yourself!”
“With one leg?” sarcastically.
“And two eyes,” said the boy. “Come on up— the
sky ’s fine!” And he laughed into the half-suspicious
face.
The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and
truthful eyes met them unabashed, unwavering, with a
something in them which made the other blink.
“When I got pitched into this burg,” said the lame
man thoughtfully, “I landed all there — except a leg,
but I never carried my brains in my legs. I hadn’t
got any bats in my belfry. But I ’m getting ’em. I ’m
getting ’em so bad that when I hear some folks talk
bughouse these days it pretty near listens like good
sense to me. Why, kid, I ’m nut enough now to dangle
over the edge of believing you know what you ’re talk-
ing about!”
“Fall over: I know I know what I ’m talking about,”
said Laurence magnificently.
“I ’m double-crossed,” said John Flint, soberly and
sadly, “Anyway I look at it — ” he swept the horizon
with a wide-flung gesture, “it ’s bugs for mine. I began
by grannying bugs for him,” he tossed his head bull-
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 99
like in my direction, “and I stand around swallowing
hot air from you — ” He glared at Laurence, “and
what ’s the result 1 Why, that I ’ve got bugs in the
bean, that ’s what 1 Think of me licking an all-day
sucker a kid dopes out! Mel Oh, he — venly saints!”
he gulped. “Ain’t I the nut, thought”
“Well, supposing f ” said Laurence, laughing. “Buck
up ! You could be a bad egg instead of a good nut, you
know!” v
John Flint’s eyes slitted, then widened; his mouth
followed suit almost automatically. He looked at me.
“Can you beat it ?” he wondered. ,
“Heating a bad egg would be a waste of time
I wouldn’t be guilty of,” said I amusedly. “But I
hope to live to see the good nut grow into a fine
tree.”
“Do your damnedest — excuse me, parson!” said he
contritely. “I mean, don’t stop for a little thing like
me!”
Laurence leaned forward. “Man,” said he, im-
pressively, “he won’t have to! You ’ll be marking time
and keeping step with him yourself before you know
it!”
“Huh!” said John Flint, non-committally.
y
Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with
us.
“Padre,” said he, when we walked up and down in the
garden, after an old custom, after dinner, “do you
really know what I mean to do when I ’ve finished col-
lege and start out on my own hook!”
“Put ‘Mayne & Son’ on the judge’s shingle and walk
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100 SLIPPY McGEE
around the block forty times a day to look at it!” said
I, promptly.
“Of course,” said he. “That first. But a legal
shingle can be turned into as handy a weapon as one
could wish for, Padre, and 1 ’m going to take that
shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide
awake with it!” He spoke with the conviction of youth,
so sure of itself that there is no room for doubt. There
was in him, too, a hint of latent power which was im-
pressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.
“It ’s my town,” with his chin out “It could be
a mighty good town. It ’s going to become one. I ex-
pect to live all my life right here, among my own people,
and they ’ve got to make it worth my while. I don’t
propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I in-
tend to make that hole big enough to fit my possible
measure.”
“May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?”
“It ’ll be a steam shovel!” said he, gaily. Then his
face clouded.
“Padre! I’m sick of the way things are run in
Appleboro! I ’ve talked with other boys and they !re
sick of it, too. You know why they want to get away?
Because they think they haven’t got even a fighting
chance here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton
old wagons sunk so deep in mudruts that nothing but
dynamite can blow them out — and they are not dealers
in dynamite. If they want to do anything that
even looks new they ’ve got to fight the stand-pat-
ters to a finish, and they ’re blockaded by a lot of
reactionaries that don’t know the earth ’s moving.
There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who ’ve
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 101
been dead since the civil war, and have n’t found it out
themselves, and won’t take live people’s word for it.
Well, now, I mean to do things. I mean to do them
right here. And I certainly shan’t allow myself to be
blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You ’ve got to
fight the devil with fire; — I ’m going to blockade those
blockaders, and see that the dead ones are decently
buried.”
“You have tackled a big job, my son.”
“I like big jobs, Padre. They ’re worth while.
Maybe I ’ll be able to keep some of the boys home — the
town needs them. Maybe I can keep some of those poor
kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right
lively time!”
I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in
the hollow of a hard hand. I had learned, too, how such
a hand can close into a strangling fist.
“Of course I can’t clean up the whole state, and I
can’t reorganize the world,” said the boy sturdily. ,
“I ’m not such a fool as to try. But I can do my level
best to disinfect my own particular comer, and make it
fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and
breathe in. Padre, for years there has n’t been a rotten
deal ntir a brazen steal in this state that the man who
practically owns and runs this town hadn’t a finger in,
knuckle-deep. He ’s got to go.”
“Goliath doesn’t always fall at the hand of the son
of Jesse, my little David,” said I quietly. I also had
dreamed dreams and seen visions.
“That ’s about wbat my father says,” said the boy.
“He wants me to be a successful man, a ’safe and sane
citizen.’ He thinks a gentleman should practise his pro-
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SLIPPY McGEE
fession decently and in order. Bnt to believe, as I do,
that yon can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle
poverty the same as you would any other disease, and
prevent it, as smallpox and yellow fever are prevented,
he looks upon as madness and a waste of time.”
“He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind
and charitable, as well as wise,” said I.
“That ’s exactly where the hardest part comes in for
us younger fellows. It isn’t bucking the bad that
makes the fight so hard: it ’s bucking the wrong-idea ’d
good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side is a
stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever
bom. It ’s men like my father, who regard the smooth
scoundrel that runs this town as a necessary evil, and
tolerate him because they wouldn’t soil their hands
dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the
state. I tell you what, it would n’t be so hard to get rid
of the devil, if it were n’t for the angels !”
“And how,” said I, ironically, “do you propose to
set about smoothing the rough and making straight the
crooked, my son!”
“Flatten ’em out,” said he, briefly. “Politics.
First off I ’m going to practice general law; then I ’ll
be solicitor-general for this county. After that, I shall
be attorney-general for the state. Later I may be gov-
ernor, unless I become senator instead.”
“Well,” said I, cautiously, “you 11 be so toned down
by that time that you might make a very good governor
indeed.”
“I couldn’t very well make a worse one than some
we ’ve already had,” said the boy sternly. There was
something of the accusing dignity of a young archangel
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 103
about him. I caught a glimpse of that newer America
growing up about ns — gn America gone back to the older,
truer, unbuyable ideals of our fathers.
“I guess you ’d better tell me good-by now, Padre,”
said he, presently. “And bless me, please — it ’s a pretty
custom. I won’t see you again, for you ’ll be saying
mass when I ’m running for my train. I ’ll go tell John
Flint good-by, too.”
He went over and rapped on the window, through
which we could see Flint sitting at his table, his head
bent over a book.
“Good-by, John Flint” said Laurence. “Good luck
to you and your leggy friends! 'When I come back
you ’ll probably have mandibles, and you ’ll greet me
with a nip, in pure Bugese.”
“Good-by,” said John Flint, lifting his head. Then,
with unwonted feeling: “I ’m horrible sorry you ’ve \
got to go — I ’ll miss you something fierce. You ’ve been
very kind — thank you. ”
“Mind you take care of the Padre,” said the boy,
waiving the thanks with a smile. “Don’t let him work
too hard.”
“Who, me!” Flint’s voice took the knife-edge of
sarcasm. “Oh, sure! It don’t need but one leg to
keep up with a gent trying to run a thirty-six hour a
day job with one-man power, does it! Son, take it from
me, when a man ’s got the real, simonpure, no-imitation,
soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone
couldn’t keep up with him, much less a guy with one
pedal short” He glared at me indignantly. From the
first it has been one of his vainest notions that I am per-
versely working myself to death.
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SLIPPY McGEE
“There ’s nothing to be done with the Padre, then,
I ’m afraid/’ said Laurence, chuckling.
“I might soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes
a day without killing him,” mused Mr. Flint. “But,”
disgustedly, “what ’d be the use! When he came to
and found he ’d been that long idle he ’d die of heart-
failure.” He pushed aside the window screen, and the
two shook hands heartily. Then the boy, wringing my
hand again, walked away without another word. I felt
a bit desolate — there are times when I could envy women
their solace of tears — as if he figured in his handsome
young person that newer, stronger, more conquering
generation which was marching ahead, leaving me, older
and slower and sadder, far, far behind it. Ah ! To be
once more that young, that strong, that hopeful!
When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary
plans, I was saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion,
perhaps even stark failure, ahead of him. That he would
stubbornly try to carry out those plans I did not doubt :
I knew my Laurence. He might accomplish a certain
amount of good. But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss
of Appleboro — for he meant no less than this — why, that -
was a horse of another color !
For Inglesby was our one great financial figure. He
owned our bank; his was the controlling interest in the
mills; he owned the factory outright; he was president
of half a dozen corporations and chairman and director
of many more.
Did we have a celebration? There he was, in the
center of the stage, with a jovial loud laugh and an
ultra-benevolent smile to hide the menace of his little
cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy jaw.
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 105
Will the statement that he had a pew in every church
in town explain himf He had one in mine, too; paid
for, which many of them are not.
At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of
access, and would listen to what you had to say with flat-
tering attention and sympathy. But it was in his
private office over the bank that this large spider really
spun the web of our politics. Mills, banks, churches,
schools, lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power —
all these juicy flies apparently walked into his parlor of
their own accord. He had made and unmade gover-
nors; he had sent his men to Washington. Howt We
suspected ; but ^ield our peace. If our Bible had bidden
us Americans to suffer rascals gladly — instead of mere
fools — we could n’t be more obedient to a mandate.
Men like James Eustis and Judge Mayne despised
Inglesby — but gave him a wide berth. They would n’t
be enmeshed. It was known that Major Appleby Cart-
wright had blackballed him.
“I can stand a man, suh, that likes to get along in
this world — within proper bounds. But Inglesby
hasn’t got any proper bounds. He ’s a — a cross be-
tween a Republican mule and a party-bolting boa-con-
strictor, an’ a hybrid like that hasn’t got any place in
nature. On top of that he drinks ten cents a bottle
grape juice and smokes five cent cigars. And he ’s
gqt the brazen and offensive effrontery to offer ’em to
self -respectin’ men!”
And here was Laurence, our little Laurence, training
himself to overthrow this overgrown Goliath ! Well, if
the boy could not bring this Philistine to the earth, he
might yet manage to give him a few manful clumps on
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SLIPPY McGEE
the head; perhaps enough to insure a chronic headache.
So thinking, I went in and watched John Flint finish
a mounting-block from a plan in the book open upon
the table, adding, however, certain improvements of his
own.
He laid the block aside and thqn took a spray of fresh
leaves and fed it to a homed and hungry caterpillar
prowling on a bit of bare stem at the bottom of his
cage.
“Get up there on those leaves, you hom-tailed horror!
Move on, — you lepidopterous son of a wigglejoint, or
I ’ll pull your real name on you in a minute and par-
alyze you stiff 1” He drew a long breath. “You know
how I ’m beginning to remember their real names! I
swear ’em half an hour a day. Next time you have
trouble with those hickeys of yours, try swearing cater-
pillar at ’em, and you ’ll find out.’’
I laughed, and he grinned with me.
“Say,” said he, abruptly. “I ’ve been listening with
both my ears to what that boy was talking to you about
awhile ago. Thinks he can buck the Boss, does he ! ”
“Perhaps he may,” I admitted.
“Nifty old bird, the Big Un,” said Mr. Flint, squint-
ing his eyes. “And,” he went on, reflectively, “he ’a
sure got your number in this burg. Take you by and
large, you lawabiders are a real funny sort, ain’t you!
Now, there ’s Inglesby, handing out the little kids their
diplomas come school-dosing, and telling ’em to be real
good, and maybe when they grow up he ’ll have a job
in pickle for ’em— work like a mule in a treadmill,
twelve hours, no unions, and the coroner to sit on the
remains, free and graiis, for to ease the widow’s mind.
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 107
Inglesby !s got seats in all your churches — first-aid to
the parson’s pants-pockets.
“Inglesby ’s right there on the platform at all your
spiel-feats, smirking at the women and telling ’em not
to bother their nice little noddles about anything but
holding down their natural jobs of being perfect ladies
— ain’t he and other gents just like him always right
there holding down their natural jobs of protecting ’em
and being influenced to do what ’s right! Sure he is!
And nobody howls for the hook! You let him be It —
him with a fist in the state’s jeans up to the armpit!
“Look here, that Mayne kid ’s dead right It ’s you
good guys that are to blame. We little bad ones see
you kowtowing to the big worse ones, and we get to
thinking we can come in under the wires easy winners,
too. However, let me tell you something while I ’m in
the humor to gas. It ’s this: sooner or later everybody
gets theirs. My sort and Inglesby ’s sort, we all get
ours. Duck and twist and turn and sidestep all we want,
at the end it ’s right there waiting for us, with a loaded
billy up its sleeve : Ours! Some fine day when we ’re
looking the other way, thinking we ’ve even got it on the
annual turnout of the cops up Broadway for class, why,
Ours gets up easy on its hind legs, spits on its mitt, and
hands us exactly what ’s coming to us, biff! and we
wake up sitting on our necks in the middle of day-before-
yesterday and year-after-nert I got mine. If I was
you I wouldn’t be too cock-sure that kid don’t give
Inglesby his, some of these days, good and plenty.’’
“Maybe so,” said I, cautiously.
“Gee, that ’d be fly-time for all the good guys in this
tank, wouldn’t it!” he grinned. “Sure! I can see
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SLIPPY McQEE
’em now, patting the bump on their beans where they
think the brain-patch sprouts, and handing out hunks
of con to the Lord about his being right on his old-time
job of swatting sinners in their dinners. Yet they 11
all of them go right on leading themselves up to be
trimmed by the very next holdup that ’s got the nerve
to do them! Friend, believe a goat when he tells you
that you stillwater-and-greenpasture sheep are some bag
of nuts!”
“Thank you,” said I, with due meekness.
“Keep the change,” said he> unabashed. “I wasn’t
meaning you, anyhow. I ’ve got more manners, I hope,
than to do such. And, parson, you don’t need to have
cold feet about young Mayne. If you ask me, 1 9 d bet
the limit on him. Why, I think so much of that boy
that if he was a rooster I ’d put the gaffs and my last
dollar on him, and back him to whip everything in
feathers clean up to baldheaded eagles. Believe me,
he ’d do it!” he finished, with ^enthusiasm.
Bewildered by a mental picture of a Laurence with
ruffled neck-feathers and steel spurs, I hurriedly changed
the subject to the saner and safer one of our own im-
mediate affairs.
“Yep, ten orders in to-day’s mail and seven in yester-
day’s; and good orders for the wasp-moths, single or
together, and that house in New York wants steady sup-
plies from now on. And here ’s a fancy shop wants a
dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We ’re looking
up,” said he, complacently.
The winter that followed was a trying one, and the
Guest Rooms were never empty. I like to record that
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THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT 109
John Flint put his shoulder to the wheel and became
Madame ’s right hand man and Westmoreland’s faithful
ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise,
and his entrance into a room never startled the most
nervous patient. He went on innumerable errands, and
he performed countless small services that in them-
selves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a
great total.
“He may have only one leg,” said Westmoreland,
when Flint had helped him all of one night with a des-
perately ill millworker, “but he certainly has two
hands ; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he ’s
dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to
the point. Father, Something knew what It was about
when you and I were allowed to drag that tramp out of
the teeth of death ! Yes, yes, I ’m certainly glad and v
grateful we were allowed to save John Flint.”
From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient
a liking which grew with his years. Absent-minded as
he was, he could thereafter always remember to find such
things as he thought might interest him. Appleboro
laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some
small butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else
to put them, clapped them under his hat, and then for-
got all about them; until he lifted his hat to some ladies
and the swarm of insects flew out.
Without being asked, -and as unostentatiously as he
did everything else, Flint had taken his place in church
every Sunday.
“Because it ’d sort of give you a black eye if I
didn’t,” he explained. “Skypiloting ’s your lay,
father, and I ’ll see you through with it as far as I lum.
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I could n’t fall down on any man that ’a been as white
to me as you ’ve been.”
I must confess that his conception of religion was
▼cry, very hazy, and his notions of church services and
customs barbarous. For instance, he disliked the statues
of the exceedingly. They worried him.
“I can’t seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts,”
he confessed. ‘‘Any more than I ’d be stuck on a dame
with whiskers. It don’t somehow look right to me.
Put the he-saints in' pants instead of those brown ki-
monas with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I d
have more respect for^^em.”
When I tried to give hiia^me necessary instructions,
and to penetrate the heatheS^, darkness in which he
seCmed immersed, he listened wiffe the utmost respect
and attention — and wrinkled his painfully, and
blinked, and licked his lips.
“That ’s all right, father, that ’s all njght. If you
say it ’s so, I guess, it ’s so. 1 11 take your Vord for it.
If it ’s good enough for you and Madame,
to be something in it, and it ’s sure good enough
Look here: the little girl and young Mayne
different brand from yours, haven’t theyt’
“Neither of them is of the Old Faith.”
“Huh! Well, I tell you what you do: you V* 118 *
switch me in somewhere between you and Madame \& n d
him and her. That 11 give me a line on all of you, •
and maybe it 11 give all of you a line on me. See?”t,
I saw, but as through a glass darkly. So the mattl er
rested. And I must in all humility set down that , ^
have never yet been able to get at what John Flint realti?
believes he believes.
kere
hav.
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CHAPTER VH
THE GOING OF SLIPPY MCGBB
L ITTLE by little, so quietly as to be tumoticeable
in the working, bnt with cumulative effect;
built under the surface like those coral reefs
that finally rear themselves into palm-crowned peaks
upon the Pacific, during the years’ slow upward march
had John Flint grown.
Nature had never meant him for a criminal. The evil
conditions that society saddles upon the slums had set him
wrong because they gave him no opportunity to be right.
Now even among butterflies there are occasional aber-
rants, but they are the rare exceptions. Give the grub
his natural food, his chance to grow, protect him from
parasites in the meanwhile, and he will presently becope
the normal butterfly. That is the Law.
At a crucial phase in this man’s career his true talis-
man — a gray moth — had been put into his hand; and
thereby he came into his rightful heritage.
I count as one of my red-letter days that on which
I found him brooding over the little gray-brown chrysalis
of the Papilio Gresphontes, that splendid swallowtail
whose hideous caterpillar we in the South call the orange
puppy, from the fancied resemblance the hump upon it
bears to the head of a young dog. Its chrysalis looks so
much like a bit of snapped-off twig that the casual eye
ill
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misses it, fastened to a stem by a girdle of silk or lying
among fallen leaves.
“I watched it ooze out, of an egg like a speck of dirty
water. I watched it eat a thousand times its own weight
and grow into the nastiest wretch that crawls. I saw
it stop eating and spit its stomach out and shrivel up,
and crawl out of its skin and pull its own head off, and
bury itself alive in a coffin made out of itself, a coffin like
a bit of rotting wood. Look at it I There it lies, stone-
dead for all a man’s eyes can see!
, 1 ‘And yet this thing will answer a call no ears can
hear and crawl out of its coffin something entirely dif-
ferent from what went into it! I ’ve seen it with my
own eyes, but how it ’s done I don’t know; no, nor no
man since the world was made knows, or could do it
himself. What does it ¥ What gives that call these ,
dead-alive things hear in the dark? What makes a
crawling ugliness get itself ready for what ’s coming —
how does it know there ’s ever going to be a call, or that
it ’ll hear it without fail?”
“Some of us call it Nature: but others call it God,”
said I.
“Search me! I don’t know what It is — but I do
know there ’s got to be Something behind these things,
anyhow,” said he, and turned the chrysalis over and over
in his palm, staring down at it thoughtfully. He had
used Westmoreland’s words, once applied to his own
case! “Oh, yes, there’s Something, because I’ve
watched It working with grubs, getting ’em ready for
five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies, Something
that ’s got the time and the patience and the know-how
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 118
to build 'wings as well as worlds.” He laid the little
inanimate mystery aside.
“It ’s come to the point, parson, where I ’ve just got
to know more. I know enough now to know how much
I don’t know, because I ’ve got a peep at how much
there is to know. There ’s a God’s plenty to find out,
and it ’s up to me to go out and find it.”
“Some of the best and brightest among men have
given all the years of their lives to just that finding out
and knowing more — and they found their years too few
and short for the work. But such help as you need and
we can get, you shall have, please God!” said I.
“I ’m ready for the word to start, chief.” _ And
heaven knows he was.
His passion transformed him; he forgot himself; took
his mind off himself and his affairs and grievances and
hatreds and fears; and thus had chance to expand and
to grow, in those following years of patientest effort, of
untiring research and observance, of lovingest study.
Days in the open woods and fields burned his pale skin
a good mahogany, and stamped upon it the windswept
freshness of out of doors. The hunted and suspicious
glance faded from his eyes, which took on more and
more the student’s absorbed intensity; the mouth lost
its sinister straightness; and while it retained an un-
compromising firmness, it learned how to smile. He
was a familiar figure, tramping from dawn to dusk with
Kerry at his heels, for the dog obeyed Mary Virginia’s
command literally. He looked upon John Flint as his
special charge, and made himself his fourlegged red
shadow. I am sure that if we had seen Kerry appear in
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the streets of Appleboro without John Flint, we would
have incontinently stopped work, sounded a general
alarm, and gone to bunt for his body. And to have seen
John Flint without Kerry would have called forth con-
dolences.
Sometimes — when I had time — I went with him moth-
hunting at night; and never, never could either of us
forget those enchanted hours under the stars!
We moved in a quiet fresh and dewy, with the night
wind upon us like a benediction. Sometimes we skirted
a cypress swamp and saw the shallow black water with
blacker trees reflected upon its bosom, and heard the
frogs’ canorous quarrelings, and the stealthy rustlings
of creatures of the dark. We crossed dreaming fields,
and smelt leaves and grasses and sleeping flowers. We
saw the heart of the wood bared to the magic of the
moon, which revealed a hidden and haunting beauty
of places commonplace enough by day; as if the secret
souls of things showed themselves only in the holy dark.
For the world into which we stepped for a space was
not our world, but the faiiy world of the Little People,
the world of the Children of the Moon. And oh, the
moths ! Now it was a tiger, with his body banded with
yellow and his white opaque delicate wings spotted with
black ; now the great green silken Luna with long curved
tails bordered with lilac or gold, and vest of ermine;
now some quivering Catocala, with afterwings spread
to show orange and black and crimson ; now the golden-
brown Io, with one great black velvet spot; and now
some rarer, shyer fellow over which we gloated.
How they flashed and fluttered about the lantern, or
circled about the trees upon which the feast had been
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 115
spread! The big yellow-banded sphinx whirred hither
and thither on his owl-like wings, his large eyes glowing
like rabies, hang quivering above some flower for a mo-
ment, and then was off again as swift as thought. The
light drew the great Regalis, all burnished tawny brown,
striped and spotted with raw gold; and the Cynthia,
banded with lilac, her heavy body tufted with white.
The darkness in which they moved, the light which for
a moment revealed th$m, seemed to make their colors
alive ; for they show no such glow and glory in the com-
mon day; they pale when the moon pales, and when the
sun is up they are merely moths; they are no longer
the fantastic, glittering, gorgeous, throbbing Children
of the Dark.
Home we would go, at an hour when the morning
'■star blazed like a lighted torch, and the pearl-gray sky
was flushing with pink. No haul he had ever made
could have given him such joy as the treasures brought
home in dawns like these, so free of evil that his heart
was washed in the night dew and swept by the night
wind.
My mother, after her pleasant, housewifely fashion,
baked a big iced cake for him on the day he replaced
his clumsy wooden peg with the life-like artificial limb
he himself had earned and paid for. I had wished more
than once to hasten this desirable day; but prudently
restrained myself, thinking it host for him to work for-
ward unaided. It hpd taken months of patient work, of
frugality, and planning, and counting, and saving, to
cover a sum which, once on a time, he might have gotten
in an honr’s evil effort. And it represented no small
achievement and marked no small advance, so that it
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was really the feast day we made of it. That limb re-
stored him to a dignity he seemed to have abdicated. It
hid his obvious misfortune — you could not at first glance
tell that he was a cripple, a something of which he had
been morbidly conscious and savagely resentful. He
would never again be able to run, or even to walk rap-
idly for any length of time, although he covered the
ground at a good and steady gait; and as he grew more
and more accustomed to the limb there was only a slight
limp to distinguish him. The use of the stick he
thought best to carry became perfunctory. I have seen
Kerry carrying that stick when his master had forgotten
all about it.
Meeting him now upon the streets, plainly but really
well-dressed, scrupulously brushed, his linen immacu-
late, and with his trimmed red beard, his eyeglasses, and
his soft hat, he conveyed the impression of being a pro-
fessional man — say a pleasantly homely and scholarly
college professor. There was a fixed sentiment in Ap-
pleboro that I knew very much more about Mr. Flint's
past than I would tell — which was perfectly true, and
went undenied by me ; that he had seen better days ; that
he had been the black sheep of a good family, gotten
into a scrape of some sort, and had then taken to travel-
ing a rough road into a far country, eating husks with
the swine, like many another prodigal; and that aware of
this I had kept him with me until he found himself
again.
So when folks met him and Kerry they smiled and
spoke, for we are friendly people and send no man to
Coventry without great cause. And there was n ; t a
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 117
' child, black or white, who didn’t know and like the
man with the butterfly net.
The country people for miles around knew and loved
him, too ; for he walked up and down the earth and went
to and fro in it, full of curious and valuable knowledge
shared freely as the need arose. He would glance at
your flower-garden, for instance, and tell you what in-
sect visitors your flowers had, and what you should do
to check their ravages. He ’d walk about your out-
buildings and commend white-wash, and talk abckit in-
secticides ; and you ’d learn that bees are partial to blue,
but flies are not; and that mosquitoes seem to dislike
certain shades of yellow. And then he ’d leave you to
digest it.
He was a quiet evangelist, a forerunner of that Grand
Army which will some day arise, not to murder and
maim men, but to conquer man’s deadliest foe and great-
est economic menace — the injurious insect.
It was he who spread the tidings of Corn and Poultry
and Live Stock Clubs, stopping by many a lonely farm
to whisper a word in the ears of discouraged boys, or
to drop a hint to unenlightened fathers and mothers.
He carried about in his pockets those invaluable re-
ports and bulletins which the government issues for the
benefit and enlightenment of farmers; and these were
left, with a word of praise, where they would do the
most good.
Those same bulletins from the Bureau of Entomology
had planted in John Flint’s heart the seed which bore
such fruit nf good citizenship. The whole course of his
early years had tended to make him suspicious of gov-
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eminent, which spelt for him police and prison, the
whole grim machinery which threatened him and which
he in torn threatened. He had feared and hated it;
it canght men and shut them up and broke them. If
he ever asked himself, “What can my government do
for met” he had to answer: “It can pnt me in prison
and keep me there; it can even send me to the Chair.”
Wherefore government was a thing to hate, to injure
— and to escape from.
The first thing he had ever found worthy of respect
and admiration in this same government was one of its
bulletins.
“Where ’d you get thist”
“I asked for it, and the Burean sent it.”
“Oh! You ’ve got a friend there!”
“No. The bulletins are free to any one interested
enough to ask for them.”
“You mean to say the government gets up things like
this — pays men to find out and write ’em up— pays to
have ’em printed — and then gives ’em away to anybody t
Why, they ’re valuable!”
“Yes; but they are nevertheless quite free. I have
a number, if you ’d like to go over them. Or you can
send for new ones.”
“But why do they do it? Where 's the graft?” he
wondered.
“The graft in this case is common sense in operation.
If farms can be run with less labor and loss and more
profit and pleasure, why, the whole country is benefited,
isn’t it? Don’t you understand, the government is
trying to help those who need help, and therefore is
willing to lend them the brains of its trained mid picked
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 119
experts? It isn’t the government’s fault if the stupid
and ignorant and selfish thwart that aim, is it?”
He said nothing. But he read and re-read the bulle-
tins I had, and sent for more, which came to him
promptly. They did n’t know him, at the Bureau; they
asked him no questions; he wasn’t going to pay any-
body so much as a penny. They assumed that the man
who asked for advice and information was entitled to
all they could reasonably give him, and they gave it
as a matter of course. That is how and why he found
himself in touch wjth his Uncle Sam, a source hitherto
disliked and distrusted. This source was glad to put
its trained intelligence at his service and the only reward
it looked to was his increased capacity to succeed in his
work! He simply couldn’t dislike or distrust that
which benefited him ; and as his admiration and respect
for the Department of Agriculture grew, unconsciously
his respect and admiration for the great government be-
hind it grew likewise. After all, it was his government
which was reaching across intervening miles, conveying
information, giving expert instruction, telling him things
he wanted to know and encouraging him to go right on
and find out more for himself !
Now if he had asked himself what his government
could do for him, he had to answer: 4 ‘It can help me
to make good.”
And he began to understand that this was possible
because he obeyed the law, and that only in intelligent
obedience and co-operation is there any true freedom.
The law no longer meant skulking by day and terror by
night ; it was protection and peace, and a chance to work
in the open, and the sympathy and understanding and)
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comradeship of decent folks. The government was no
longer a brute force which arbitrarily popped men into
prison ; it was the common will of a free people, just as
the law was the common conscience.
I dare not say that he learned all this easily, or all
at once, or even willingly. None of us learns our great
lessons easily. We have to live them, breathe them,
work them out with sweat and tears. That we do learn
them, even inadequately, makes the glory and the won-
der of man.
And so John Flint went to school to the government
of the United States, and carried its little text-books
about with him and taught them to others in even more
need that he ; and heckled hopeless boys into Corn Clubs ;
and coaxed sullen mothers and dissatisfied girls into
Poultry and Tomato Clubs; and was full of homely
advice upon such living subjects as the spraying of fruit
trees, and how to save them from blight and scale-insects,
and how to get rid of flies, and cut- worms, and to fight
the cattle-tick, which is our curse ; and the preservation
of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking
for birds began with Miss Sally Ruth’s pigeons and the
friendly birds in our garden. And as he learned to
know them his love for them grew. I have seen him
daily visit a wren’s nest without once alarming the little
black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-
bird’s call, and heard that loveliest of all birds answer
him. And I have seen the impudent jays, within reach
of his hand, swear at him unabashed and unafraid, be-
cause he fed a vireo first.
I like to think of his intimate friendship with the
wholesome country children — not the least of his bless-
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 121
ings. He was their chief visitor from the outside world.
He knew wonderful secrets about things one hadn’t
noticed before, and he could make miracles With his
quick ^ strong fingers. He ’d sit down, his stick and
knapsack beside him, his glamorous dog at his feet, and
while you and your sisters and brothers and friends and
neighbors hung about him like a cluster of tow-headed
bees, he ’d turn a few sticks and bits of cloth and twine
and a tack or two, and an old roller-skate wheel he took
out of his pocket, into an air-ship ! He could go down
by your little creek and make you a water-wheel, or a
windmill. He could make you marvelous little men,
funny little women, absurd animals, out of corks or
peanuts. He knew, too, just exactly the sort of knife
your boy-heart ached for — and at parting you found
that very knife slipped into your enraptured palm.
You might save the pennies you earned by picking ber-
ries and gathering nuts, but you could never, never find
at any store any candy that tasted like the sticks that
came out of his pockets, and you needn’t hope to try.
He had the inviolable secret of that candy, and he im-
parted to it a divine flavor no other candy ever pos-
sessed. If you were a little doll-less girl, he didn’t
leave you with the provoking promise that Santa Claus
would bring you one if you were good. He was so sure
you were good that he made you right then and there
a wonderful doll out of corn-husks, with shredded hair,
and a frock of his own handkerchief. When he came
again you got another doll — a store doll; but I think
your child-heart clung to the corn-baby with the hand-
kerchief dress. I have often wondered how many little
cheeks snuggled against John Flint’s home-made dollies^
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SLIPPY McGEE
how many innocent breasts cradled them; how many a
little fellow carried his knife- to bed with him, afraid
to let it get out of reach of a hard little hand, because
he might wake up in the morning and find he had only
dreamed it! No, I hardly think the country children
were the least of John Flint’s blessings. They would
run to meet him, hold on to his hands, drag him here
and there to show him what wonders their sharp eyes
had discovered since his last visit; and give him, with
shining eyes, such cocoons and caterpillars, and insects
as they had found for him. It was they who called him
the Butterfly Man, a name which spread over the whole
country-side. If you had asked for John Flint, folks
would have stared. And if you described him — a tall
man in a Norfolk suit, with a red beard and a red dog,
and an insect case:
“Oh, you mean the Butterfly Man! Sure. You ’ll
find him about somewhere with the kids.” If there was
anything he couldn’t have, in that county, it was be-
cause folks hadn’t it to give if he should ask.
At home his passion for work at times terrified me.
When I protested:
“I was twenty-five years old when I landed here,” he
reminded me. “So I ’ve got twenty-five years’ back-
work to catch up with.”
He had taken over a correspondence that had since
become voluminous, and which included more and more
names that stood for very much. Sometimes when I
read aloud a passage from a letter that praised him, he
turned red, and writhed like a little boy whose ears are
being relentlessly washed by his elders.
By this time he had learned to really classify; heav-
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 183
ens, how unerringly he could place an insect in its
proper niche! It was a sort of sixth sense with him.
That cold, clear, incisive power of brain which on a time
had made Slippy McGee the greatest cracksman in
America, was, trained and disciplined in a better cause,
to make John Flint in later years an international au-
thority upon lepidoptera, an observer to whom other
observers deferred, a naturalist whose dictum settled
disputed points. And I knew it, I foresaw it !
Mea culpa , mea maxima culpa! I grew as vain over
his enlarging powers as if I had been the Mover of the
Game, not a pawn. I felt, gloriously, that I had not
lived for nothing. A great naturalist is not born every
day, no, nor every year, nor even every century. And
I had caught me a great burglar and I had hatched me
a great naturalist! My Latin soul was enraptured with
this ironic anomaly. I could not choose but love the man
for that.
I really had some cause for vanity. Others than my-
self had been gradually drawn to the unassuming But-
terfly Man. Westmoreland loved him. A sympathetic
listener who seldom contradicted, but often shrewdly
suggested, Flint somehow knew how to bring out the
big doctor’s best; andbin consequence found himself in
contact with a mind above all meanness and a nature as
big and clean as a spray-swept beach.
4 * Oh, my, my, my, what a surgeon gone to waste!”
Westmoreland would lament, watching the long, sure
fingers at work. “Well, I suppose it ’s all for the best
that Father De Kance beat me to you — at least you ’ve
done less damage learning your trade.” So absorbed
would he become that he sometimes forgot cross patients
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124 SLIPPY McGEE
who were possibly faming themselves into a fever over
his delay.
Eustis, who had met the Butterfly Man on the coun-
try roads and had stopped his horse for an informal
chat, would thereafter go out of his way for a talk with
him. These two reticent men liked each other im-
mensely. At opposite poles, absolutely dissimilar, they
yet had odd similarities and meeting-points. Eustis was
nothing if not practical; he was never too busy to for-
get to be kind. Books and pamphlets that neither Flint
nor I could have hoped to possess found their way to us
through him. Scientific periodicals and the better
magazines came regularly to John Flint’s address.
That was Eustis ’s way. This friendship put the finish-
ing touch upon the Butterfly Man’s repute. He was
my associate, and my mother was devoted to him. Miss
Sally Ruth, whose pet pear-tree he had saved and whose
pigeons he had cured, approved of him, too, and said
so with her usual openness. Westmoreland was known
to be his firm friend; nobody could forget the incident
of those butterflies in the doctor’s hat! Major Cart-
wright liked him so much that he even bore with the
dogs, though Pitache in particular must have sorely
strained his patience. Pitache cherished the notion that
it was liis duty to pass upon all visitors to the Butterfly
Man’s rooms. For some reason, known only to himself,
the little dog also cherished a deep-seated grudge
against the major, the very sound of whose voice out-
side the door was enough to send him howling under
the table, where he lay with his head on his paws, a wary
eye cocked balefully, and his snarls punctuating the
Major’s remarks.
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 125
“He smells my Unitarian soul, confound him!’’ said
the major. “An’ he ’s so orthodox he thinks he 11 get
chucked out of dog-heaven, if he doesn’t show his disap-
proval.’ ’
The little dog did finally learn to accept the major’s
presence without outward protest ; though the major de-
clared that Pitache always hung down his tail when he
came and hung it up when he left !
The Butterfly Man accepted whatever friendliness was
proffered without diffidence, but with no change in his
natural reserve. You could tell him anything: he
listened, made few comments and gave no advice, was
absolutely non-shockable, and never repeated what he
heard. The unaffected simplicity of his manner de-
lighted my mother. She said you couldn’t tell her—
there was good blood in that man, and he had been more
than any mere tramp before he fell into our hands!
Why, just observe his manner, if you please! It was
the same to everybody; he had, one might think, no
sense whatever of caste, creed, age, sex, or color; and
yet he neither gave offense nor received it.
Those outbursts which had so terrified me at first came
at rare and rarer intervals. If I were to live for a
thousands years I should never be able to forget the last
and worst; which fell upon him suddenly and without
warning, on a fine morning while he sat on the steps of
his verandah, and I beside him with my Book of Hours
in my hand. In between the Latin prayers I sensed
pleasantly the light wind that rustled the vines, and how
the Mayne bees went grumbling from flower to flower,
and how one single bird was singing to himself over and
over the self-same song, as if he loved it; and how the
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SLIPPY McGEE
sunlight fell in a great square, like a golden carpet, in
front of the steps. It was all very still and peaceful.
I was just turning a page, when John Flint jerked his
pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and hurled
the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily,
and saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas ; from
which a thin spiral of smoke arose lazily in the calm
air. But Flint shoved his hat back on his head, sat up
stiffly, and swore.
He had been with me then nearly four years, and I
had learned to know the symptoms: — restlessness, fol-
lowed by hours of depressed and sullen brooding. So I
* had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I
never witnessed one of these outbursts without being
shaken to the depths. This one was different — as if the
evil force had invaded him suddenly, giving him no time f
to resist. A glance at his face made me lay aside the
book hurriedly ; for this was no ordinary struggle. The
words that had come to me at first came back now with
redoubled meaning, and rang through my head like
passing-bells :
“ For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but
against . . . the rulers of the world of thii darkness ,
against the spirits of wickedness
He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily.
As for me, my throat felt as if it had been choked with
ashes. I could only stare at him, dumbly. If ever a
man was possessed, he was. His voice rose, querulously:
“I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I
study them, and I dry them — and I go to bed. I get
up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them,
and I dry them — and I go to bed. I get up every mom-
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 127
in g, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and
over and over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing
else. ... No drinks, no lights, no girls, no sprees, no
cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no bulls, no anything !
God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere
from the Battery up to Columbus Circle ! I want it all
so hard I could point my nose like a lost dog and howl
for it!
“. . . . There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on
Eighth Avenue, and I dream at nights about the hot-
dog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they give you there,
and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse,
she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your
nose in a way you ’ve got to respect. I smell those eats
in my sleep. I want some more Childs’ bucks. I want
to see the electrics winking on the roofs. I want to
smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the
rain. I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back
like a piano-box and a paw like a ham and a foot like a
submarine with stove-polish on it. I want to see the
subway in the rush l\our and the dips and mollbuzzers
going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I
want to see a ninety-story building going up, and the
wops crawling on it like ants. I want to see the bread-
line, and the panhandlers, and the bums in Union
Square. I want a bellyful of the happy dust the old
town hands out — the whole dope and all there is of it!
My God ! I want everything I haven’t got !”
He looked at me, wildly. He was trembling violently,
and sweat poured down his face.
“Parson,” he rasped, “I ’ve bucked this thing for
fair, but I ’ve got to go back and see it and smell it and
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SLIPPY McGEE
taste it and feel it and know it all again, or I ’ll go
crazy. You ’re all of you so good down here you ’re
too much for me. 1 9 m home-sick for hell . It — it comes
over me like fire over the damned. • You don’t fool your-
self that folks who know what it is to be damned can
stay on in heaven without freezing, do you! Well, they
can’t. I can’t help it! I can’t! I ’ve got to go — this
time I ’ve got to go!”
I sat and stared at him. Oh, what was it Paul had
said we were to pray for, at such a time as this!
“ And for me, that speech may be given to me . . .
that I may open my mouth with confidence ...”
But the words wouldn’t come.
“I ’ve got to go! I ’ve got to go, and try myself
out!” he gritted.
“You — understand your risks,” I managed to say
through stiff lips. I had always, in my secret heart,
been more or less afraid of this. Always had I feared
that the rulers of the world of darkness, swooping
down and catching him unaware, might win the long
fight in the end.
“Here you are safe. You are building up an hon-
ored name. You are winning the respect and confidence
of all decent people — and you wish to undo it all. You
wish to take such desperate chances — now ! ’ ’ I groaned.
“I’ve got to go!” he burst forth, white-lipped.
“You ’ve never seen a dip cut off from his dope, have
you! Well, I ’m it, when the old town calls me loud
enough for me to hear her plain. I ’ve stood her off
as long as I could — and now I ’m that crazy for her I
could wallow in her dust. Besides, there ’s not such a
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THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE 129
lot of risks. I don’t have to leave my card at the sta-
tion-house to let ’em know I ’m calling, do I! They
have n’t been sitting on what they think is my grave to
keep me from getting up before Gabriel beats ’em to it,
have they? No, they ’re not expecting me. What I
could do to ’em now would make the Big Uns look like a
bunch of pikers — and their beans would have to turn
inside out before they fell for it that 1 9 d come back to
my happy home and was on the job again.”
“If — if you hadn’t been so white, I ’d have cut and
run for it without ever putting you wise. But I want
to play fair. I ’d be a hog if I didn’t play fair, and
I ’m trying to do it. I ’m going because I can’t stay.
I ’ve got enough of my own money, earned honest, saved
up, to pay my way. Let me take it and go. And if I
can come back, why, I 11 come.”
He was stone deaf to entreaties, prayers, reasoning,
argument. The four years of his stay with me, and all
their work, and study, and endeavor, and progress,
seemed to have slipped from him as if they had never
been. They were swept aside like cobwebs. He broke
away from me in the midst of my pleading, hurried into
his bedroom, and began to sort into a grip a few ne-
cessities.
“I ’ll leave on the three-o’clock,” he flung over his
shoulder to me, standing disconsolate in the door. “1 11
stop at the bank on my way.” I could do nothing; he
had taken the bit between his teeth and was bolting. I
had for the time being lost all power of control over
him, and before I might hope to recover it he wquld be
out of my reach. Perhaps, I reflected wretchedly, the
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SLIPPY McGEE
'best thing to do under the circumstances, would simply
he to give him his head. I had seen horses conquered
like that. But the road before John Flint was so dark
and so crooked — and at the end of it waited Slippy
McGee !
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CHAPTER VIII
, THE BUTTERFLY MAN
I T was just one-thirty by the placid little clock on
his mantel. The express was due at three.
“Very well,” said I, forcing myself to face the
inevitable without noise, “you are free. If you must
go, you must go.”
“I ’ve got to go! I *ve got to go!” He repeated it
as one repeats an incantation. “I ’ve got to go !” And
he went on methodically assorting and packing. Even
at this moment of obsession his ingrained orderliness
asserted itself ; the things he rejected were laid back in
their proper place with the nicest care.
I went over to tell my mother that John Flint had sud-
denly decided to go north. She expressed no surprise,
but immediately fell to counting on her fin|$ers his avail-
able shirts, socks, and underwear. She rather hoped he
would buy a new overcoat in New York, his old one
being hardly able to stand the strain of another winter.
She was pleasantly excited; she knew he had many
northern correspondents, with whom he must naturally
be anxious to foregather. There was much to call him
thither.
“He really needs the change. A short trip will do
him a world of good,” she concluded equably. “He is
still quite a young man, and I ’m sure it must be dull
131
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SLIPPY McGEE
182
for him here at times, in spite of his work Why, he
has n’t been out of this county for over three years, and
just think of the unfettered life he must have led before
he came here ! Yes, I ’m sure New York will stimulate
him. A dose of New York is a very good tonic. It regu-
lates one’s mental liver. Don’t look so worried, Armand
— you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I
should think a duckling of John Flint’s size could be
trusted to swim by himself, at his time of life!”
She had not my cause for fear. Besides, in her secret
heart, Madame was convinced that, rehabilitated, re-
claimed, having more than proven his intrinsic worth,
John Flint went to be reconciled with and received into
the bosom of some preeminently proper parent, and to
be acclaimed and applauded by admiring and welcoming
friends. For although she had once heard the Butterfly
Man gravely assure Miss Sally Ruth Dexter that the
only ancestor his immediate Flints were sure of was
Flint the pirate, my mother still clung firmly to the
illusion of Family. Blood will tell !
As for me, I was equally sure that blood was telling
now; and telling in the atrocious tongue of the depths.
I felt that the end had come. Vain, vain, all the labor,
all the love, all the hope, the prayers, the pride! The
submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the
vampire extended her white and murderous arms in
which many and many had died shamefully; she lifted
to his her insatiable lips stained scarlet with the wine
of hell. Against that siren smile, those beckoning hands,
I could do nothing. The very fact that I was what I
am, was no longer a help, but rather a hindrance; he
recognized in the priest a deterring and detaining influ-
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THE BUTTERFLY MAN
133
ence against which he rebelled, and which he wished to
repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly, “home-
sick for hell.” He would go, and he would most in-
evitably be caught in the whirlpools ; the naturalist, the
scientist, the Butterfly Man, would be sucked into that
boiling vortex and drowned beyond all hope of resuscita-
tion ; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would emerge,
with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-
fold more deadly dangerous than of old; because this
time he knew better and had deliberately chosen the evil
and rejected the good. By the law of the pendulum he
must swing as far backward into wrong as he had swung
forward into right.
I could not bring myself to speak to him, I dared not
bid him the mockery of a Godspeed upon his journey,
dreading as I did that journey’s end. So I stood at a
window and watched him as with suitcase in hand he
walked down our shady street. At the comer he turned
and lifted his hat in a last farewell salute to my mother,
standing looking after him in the Parish House gate.
Then he turned down the side-street, and so disappeared.
From his closed rooms came a long wailing howl. For
the first time Kerry might not follow his master; more
yet, the master had thrust the astonished dog into his
bedroom and shut the door upon him. He had refused
to recognize the scratch at the door, the snuffling whine
through the keyhole. The outer door had slammed.
Kerry raced to the window. And the master was going,
and going without him ! He had neither net, knapsack,
nor bottle-belt, but he carried a Suitcase. He did not
look back, nor whistle: he meant to leave him behind.
Sensing that an untoward thing was occurring, a thing
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SLIPPY McGEE
that boded no good to himself or his beloved, the red
dog lifted his voice and howled a piercing protest.
The sash was down, but the blinds had not yet been
dosed to. One saw Kerry standing with his forepaws
on the window-sill, his nose against the glass, his ears
lifted, his eyes anxious and distressed, his lip caught in
his teeth. At intervals he threw back his head, and then
came the howls.
The catastrophe — for to me it was no less a thing —
had come upon me so suddenly that I was fairly stunned.
From sheer force of habit I went over to the church
and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I could
only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the
three o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes
later, its longer screech as it departed. He had gone,
then ! I was not dreaming it : it was true. Down and
down and down went my heart. And down and down
and down went my head, humbled and prostrate. Alas,
the end of hope, the fall of pride ! Alas and alas for the
fair house built upon the sand, wrecked and scattered !
When I rose from my knees I staggered. I walked
draggingly, as one walks with fetters upon the feet.
Oh, it was a cruel world, a world in which nothing but
inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was foredoomed
to disappointment ; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
stripped bare.
I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned
my head aside as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry
barked at my passing step, and pawed frantically at the
window, but I made no effort to release him. What com-
fort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what
he most loved f
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185
His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was
exactly as if the dog howled for the dead. And that
John Flint was dead 1 had no reasonable cause to doubt.
He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive. That
thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden,
for as black an hour as I have ever lived through — the
sort of hour that leaves a scar upon the soul. The gar-
den was very still, steeped and drowsing in the bright
clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling
from flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo’s
sweet whistle fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay- on
John Flint’s porch, and dozed with his head between his
paws; Judge Mayne’s Panch sat on the garden fence,
and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet
salvia shot up its vivid spikes, and whejj the wind
stirred, the red petals fell from it like drops of blood.
It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should
suffer on such a day; grief is for gray days; but the
sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft wind makes light of
it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I walked
up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that
every flying minute took him farther and farther away
from me and from hope and happiness and honor, and
brought him nearer and nearer to the whirlpool and the
pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut into
my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get
away from the misery within. My heart ached intoler-
ably, a mist dimmed my sight, and a hideous choking
lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that, old
and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden,
but in the midst of the abomination of desolation.
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SLIPPY McGEE
Through this aching desolation Kerry’s cries stabbed
like knife-thrusts. . . . And then little Pitache lifted his
head, cocked a listening ear and an alert eye, perked np
his black nose, thumped an expressive tail, and
barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing it,
stiffened statue-like at the window and fell to whining
in his throat. The garden gate had clicked.
Dreading that any mortal eye should see me thus in
my grief, knowing it was beyond my power of endurance
to meet calmly or to speak coherently with any human
being at that moment, I turned, with the instinct of
flight strong upon me. I knew I must be alone, to face
this thing in its inevitableness, to fight it out, to get my
bearings. The gate was turning upon its hinges ; I could
hear it creak.
Hesitating which way to turn, I looked up to see who
it was that was coming into the Parish House garden.
And I fell to trembling, and rubbed my eyes, and stared
again, unbelievingly. There had been plenty of time
for him to have visited the bank and withdrawn his ac-
count; there had been plenty of time for him then to
have caught the three-o’clock express. I had heard the
train come and go this full hour since. Surely my wish
was father to the thought that I saw him before me — my
old eyes were playing me a trick — for I thought I saw
John Flint walking up the garden path toward me!
Pitache barked again, rose, stretched himself, and trotted
to meet him, as he always did when the Butterfly Man
came home.
He walked with the limp most noticeable when he
tried to hurry. He was flushed and perspiring and
rumpled and well-nigh breathless ; his coat was wrinkled.
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THE BUTTERFLY MAN
137
his tie awry, his collar wilted, and bits of grass, and
twigs and a leaf or so clung to his dusty clothes. The
afternoon sun shone full on his thick, close-cropped hair,
for he carried his hat in his hands, gingerly, carefully,
as one might carry a fragile treasure; a clean pocket
handkerchief was tied over it.
He was making straight for his workroom. I do not
think he saw me until I stepped into the path, directly
in front of him. Then, stopping perforce, he looked at
me with dancing eyes, wiped his red perspiring face with
one hand, and nodded to the hat, triumphantly.
“Such an — aberrant!” he panted. He was still
breathing so Tapidly he had to jerk his words out.
“1 ’ve got the — biggest, handsomest — most perfect and
wonderful — specimen of — an aberrant swallow-tail — any
man ever laid — his eyes on ! I thought at first — I was n ’t
seeing things right. But I was. Parson, parson, I Ve
seen many — butterflies — but never — another one like —
this !” He had to pause, to take breath. Then he burst
out again, unable to contain his delight.
“Oh, it was the luckiest chance! I was standing on
the end platform of the last car, and the train was pull-
ing out, when I saw her go sailing by. I stared with all
my eyes, shut ’em, stared again, and there she was ! I
knew there was never going to be such another, that if I
lost her I ’d mourn for the rest of my days. I knew I
had to have her. So I measured my distance, risked my
neck, and jumped for her. Game leg and all I jumped,
landed in the pit of a nigger’s stomach, went down on
top of him, scrambled up again and was off in a jiffy,
with the darky bawling he ’d been killed and the station
buzzing like the judge’s bees on strike, and people hang-
u
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138 SLIPPY McGEE
mg oat of all the car windows to see who 'd been mar*
dered.
“She led me the devil’s own chase, for I ’d nothing
but my hat to net her with. A dozen times I thought
I had her, and missed. It was heart-breaking. I felt
I ’d go stark crazy if she got away from me. I had to
get her. And the Lord was good and rewarded me for
my patience, for I caught her at the end of a mile run.
I was so blown by then that I had to lie down in the
grass by the roadside and get my wind back. Then I
slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it
up, and here she is ! She has n’t hurt herself, for she ’s
been quiet. She ’s perfect. She hasn’t rubbed off a
scale. She ’s the size of a bat. Her upper wings, and
one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with yel-
low, and one lower wing is all yellow. She ’s got the
usual orange spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and
blobs of gold, and the purple spills over onto the ground-
color. She ’s a wonder. Come on in and let ’s gloat at
our ease — I have n’t half seen her yet! She ’s the big-
gest and most wonderful Turnus ever made. Why, Ga-
briel could wear her in his crown to make himself feel
proud, because there ’d be only one like her in heaven !”
He took a step forward; but I could only stand still
and blink, owlishly. My heart pounded and the blood
roared in my ears like the wind in the pinetrees. My
senses were in a most painful confusion, with but one
thought struggling clear above the turmoil: that John
Flint had come hack.
“But you didn’t go!’’ I stammered. “Oh, John
Flint, John Flint, you didn’t go!”
He snorted. “Catch me ru nnin g away like a fool
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THE BUTTERFLY MAN
139
when a six-inch off-color swallow-tail flirts herself under
my nose and dares me to catch her! You ’d better be-
lieve I didn’t go!”
And then I knew with a great uprush of joy that
Slippy McQee himself had gone instead, and the three-
o’clock express was bearing him away, forever and for-
ever, beyond recall or return. Slippy McQee had gone
into the past; he was dead and done with. But John
Flint the naturalist was vibrantly and vitally alive, built
upon the living rock, a house not to be washed away by
any wave of passion.
This reaction from the black and bitter hour through
which I had just passed, this turbulent joy and relief,
overcame me. My knees shook and gave way ; I tottered,
and sank helplessly into the seat built around our great
magnolia. And shaken out of all self-control I wept as
I had not been permitted to weep over my own dead, my
own overthrown hopes. Head to foot I was shaken as
with some rending sickness. The sobs were tom out of
my throat with gasps.
He stood stone still. He went white, and his nostrils
grew pinched, and in his set face only his eyes seemed
alive and suffering. They blinked at me, as if a light had
shone too strongly upon them. A sort of inarticulate
whimper came from him. Then with extreme care he
laid the handkerchief -covered hat upon the ground, and
down upon his knees he went beside me, his arms about
my knees. He, too, was trembling.
“Father! . . .'Father!”
“My son. ... I was afraid . . . you were lost . . .
gone . . . into a far country. ... It would have broken
my heart!”
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SLIPPY McGEE
He said never a word; bat hang his head upon his -
breast, and clung to my knees. When he raised his eyes
to mine, their look was so piteous that I had to put my
hand upon him, as one reassures one’s child. So for a
healing time we two remained thus, both silent. The
garden was exquisitely still and calm and peaceful We
were shut in and canopied by walls and roof of waving
green, lighted with great cream-colored flowers with
hearts of gold, and dappled with sun and shadow.
Through it came the vireo’s fairy flute.
God knows what thoughts went through John Flint’s
mind; but for me, a great peace stole upon me, mixed
with a greater, reverent awe and wonder. Oh, heart of
little faith! I had been afraid; I had doubted and
despaired and been unutterably wretched; I had thought
him lost whom the Powers of Darkness swooped upon,
conquered, and led astray. And God had needed
nothing stronger than a butterfly’s fragile wing to bear
a living soul across the abyss!
We went together, after a while, to his rooms, and
when he had submitted to Kerry’s welcome, we care-
fully examined the beautiful insect he had captured.
As he had said, she had not lost a scale; and she was by
far the most astonishing aberrant I have ever seen, before
or since. The Tumus is perhaps the most beautiful of
our butterflies, and this off-color was larger than the
normal, and more irregularly and oddly and brilliantly
colored. Their natural coloring is gorgeous enough ; but
hers was like a seraph’s head-jewels.
I have her yet, with the date of her capture written
under her. She is the only one of all our butterflies I
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THE BUTTERFLY MAN 141
claim personally. The gold has never been minted that
could buy that Tumus.
“I had the station agent wire for my grip,” said Flint
casually. “And I gave the darky I knocked down fifty
cents to soothe his feelings. He offered to let me do it
again for a quarter.” His eyes roved over the pleasant
workroom with its books and cabinets, its air of homely
comfort ; through the open door one glimpsed the smaller
bedroom, the crucifix on the white wall. He dropped
his hand on Kerry’s head, close against his knee, and
drew a sharp breath.
“Father,” said he, quietly, and looked at me with
steady eyes, “you don’t need to be afraid for me any
more as you had to be to-day. To-day ’s the last of my
— my dumfoolishness.” After a moment he added:
“Remember what that little girl said when she gave
me her dog? Well, I reckon she was right. I reckon
I ’m here for keeps. I reckon, father, that you and I
do belong.”
“Yes,” said I; and looked over the cases of our but-
terflies, and the books we had gathered, and the table
where we worked and studied together. “Yes; you and
I belong.” And I left him with Kerry’s head on his
knees, and Kerry’s eyes adoring him, and went over to
the Parish House to tell Madame that John Flint had
changed his mind and would n’t go North just now, be-
cause an aberrant Tumus had beguiled him.
For a moment my mother looked profoundly disap-
pointed.
“Are you sure,” she asked, “that this does n’t mean a
loss to him, Arnwmd?”
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SLIPPY McGEE
“Yes, I am sure.”
She watched my eyes, and of a sudden she reached
out, caught my hand, and squeezed it. Her face softened
with sympathetic and tolerant understanding, but she
asked no questions, made no comment. If Solomon had
been lucky enough to marry my mother, I am sure he
would never have plagued himself with the nine hundred
and ninety-nine. But then, neither would he have writ-
ten Proverbs.
Neither the Butterfly Man nor I have ever referred to
that morning’s incident; the witness of it we cherish;
otherwise it pleases us to ignore it as if it had never
happened. It had, of course, its results, for with a des-
perate intensity of purpose he plunged back into study
and research ; and as the work was broadening, and called
for all his skill and patience, the pendulum swung him
far forward again.
I had been so fascinated, watching that transforma-
tion, even more wonderful than any butterfly’s, going
on before my eyes; I was so enmeshed in the web of
endless duties spun for me by my big poor parish that
I did not have time to miss Mary Virginia as poignantly
as I must otherwise have done, although my heart longed
for her.
My mother never ceased to mourn her absence;
something went away from us with Mary Virginia,
which could only come back to us with her. But it so
happened that the ensuing summers failed to bring her
back. The little girl spent her vacations with girl friends
of whose standing her mother approved, or with rela-
tives she thought it wise the child should cultivate. For
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THE BUTTERFLY MAN 148
the time being, Mary Virginia had vanished out of our
lives.
Laurence, however, spent all his vacations at home;
and of Laurence we were immensely proud. Most of his
holidays were spent, not with younger companions, but
oddly enough with John Flint That old friendship, re-
newed after every parting, seemed to have grown stronger
with the boy’s growth; the passing years deepened it.
1 ‘My boy ’s forever boasting of your Butterfly Man,”
said the judge, falling into step with me one morning
on the street. “He tells me Flint ’s been made a mem-
ber of several learned societies ; and that he ’s gotten out
a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some
crawling plague or other. And it seems this is n’t all the
wonderful Mr. Flint is capable of : Laurence insists that
biologists will have to look Flintward pretty soon, on
account of observations on what he calls insect allies —
whatever they are.”
“Well, you see, his work on insect allies is really
unique and thorough, and it opens a door to even more
valuable research,” said I, as modestly as I could.
“Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he ’s blazing the
way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his
own, he will rank far, far above tricky senators and
mutable governors!”
The judge smiled. “Spoken like a true bughunter,”
said he. “As a matter of fact, this fellow is a remark-
able man. Does he intend to remain here for good?”
“Yes,” said I, “I think he intends to remain here —
for good.” I could not keep the pride out of my voice
and eyes. Let me again admit my grave fault : I am a
vain and proud old man, God forgive me !
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SLIPPY McGEE
“ Your goose turned out a butterfly,” said the judge.
4 4 One may well be pardoned a little natural vanity when
one has engineered a feat like that! Common tramp,
too, wasn’t he?”
‘ ‘No, he was n’t. He was a most uncommon one.”
“I could envy the man his' spontaneity and origin-
ality,” admitted the judge, rubbing iris nose. “Well,
father, I ’m perfectly satisfied, so far, to have my only
son tramp with him.”
“So is my mother,” said I.
At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fash-
ioned courtesy good to see in this age when a youth walks
beside a maid and blows cigarette smoke in her face upon
the public streets.
“When such a lady approves of any man,” said he,
gallantly, “it confers upon him letters patent of no-
bility.”
“We shall have to consider John Flint knighted,
then/’ said my mother merrily, when I repeated the
conversation. “Let ’s see,” she continued gaily.
4 ‘We ’ll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant
on a field, azure; in the lower comer a net, argent.
Motto, ‘In Hoc Signo Vinces / There ’ll be no sign of
the cyanide jar. I ’ll have nothing sinister shadowing
the Butterfly Man’s escutcheon!”
She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept;
she had never met Slippy McGee.
/
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CHAPTER IX
NESTS
L AURENCE at last hung out that shingle
which was to tingle Appleboro into step with
the Time-spirit. It was a very happy and im-j
portant day for the judge and his immediate friends/
though Appleboro at large looked on with but apathetic
interest. One more little legal light flickering 1 4 in our
midst” didn’t make much difference; we literally have
lawyers to burn. So we are n’t too enthusiastic over our
fledglings; we wait for them to show us — which is good
for them, and sometimes better for us.
This fledgling, however, was of the stuff which en-
dures. Laurence was one of those dynamic and danger-
ous people who not only think independently them-
selves, but have the power to make other people think.
No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it
seemed to crackle electrically in the air around him ; he
was a sort of human thought-conductor, and he shocked
many a smug and self-satisfied citizen into horrific life
before he had done with him.
If this young man had not been one of the irreproach-
able Maynes Appleboro might have set him down as a
pestilent and radical theorist and visionary. But for-
tunately for us and himself he was a Mayne; and the
Maynes have been from the dawn of things Carolinian
4< a good family.”
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SLIPPY McGEE
I don’t think I have ever seen two people so mutually
delight in each other’s powers as did John Flint and
Laurence Mayne. The Butterfly Man was immensely
proud of Laurence’s handsome person and his grace of
speech and manner; he had even a more profound re-
spect for his more solid attainments, for his own struggle
upward had deepened his regard for higher education.
As for Laurence, he thought his friend marvelous ; what
he bad overcome and become made him in the younger
man’s eyes an incarnate proof of the power of will and
of patience. The originality and breadth of his views
fired the boy’s imagination and broadened his person-
ality. The two complemented each other.
The Butterfly Man’s workroom had a fascination for
others than Laurence. It was a sort of Open Question
Club. Here Westmoreland came to air his views with a
free tongue and to ride his hobbies with a gallant zest;
here the major, tugging at his goatee, his glasses far
down on his nose, narrated in spicy chapters the Secret
Social History of Appleboro. Here the judge — for he,
too, had fallen into the habit of strolling over of an
evening — sunk in the old Morris chair, his cigar gone
cold in his fingers, reviewed great cases. And sometimes
Eustis stopped by, spoke in his modest fashion of his
experiments, and left us all the better for his quiet
strength. And Flint, with his eyes alive and watchful
behind his glasses, listened with that air which made
one like to tell him things. Laurence declared that he
got his post-graduate course in John Flint’s workroom,
and that the Butterfly Man wasn’t the least of his
teachers.
I should dearly like to say that the Awakening of
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147
Appleboro began in that workroom ; and in a way it did.
But it really had its inception in a bird’s nest John
Flint had discovered and watched with great interest
and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept
his approach without fear; he said she knew him per-
sonally. She allowed him to approach close enough
to touch her; she even took food out of his fingers.
He had worked toward that friendliness with great
skill and patience, and his success gave him infinite
pleasure. He had a great tenderness for the little
brown lady, and he looked forward to her babies with
an almost grandfatherly eagerness. The nest* was over
in a corner of our garden, in a thick evergreen bush big
enough to be called a young tree.
Now on a sunny morning Laurence and I and the
Butterfly Man walked in our garden. Laurence had
gotten his first brief, and we two older fellows were some-
what like two old birds fluttering over an adventurous
fledgling. I think we saw the boy sitting on the Supreme
Court bench, that morning!
As we neared the evergreen tree the Butterfly Man
raised his hand to caution us to be silent. He wanted us
to see his wee friend’s reception of him, and so he went
on a bit ahead, to let her know she need n’t be afraid —
we, too, were merely big friends come a-calling. And
just then we heard shrill cries of distress, and above it
the louder, raucous scream of the bluejay.
The bluejay was entirely occupied with his own busi-
ness of breaking into another bird’s nest and eating the
eggs. He scolded violently between mouthfuls; he had
finished three eggs and begun on the fourth and last
when we came upon the scene. He had no fear of us;
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SLIPPY McGEE
he had seen us before, and he knew very well indeed that
the red-bearded creature with the cane was a particular
and peculiar friend of feathered folks. So he cocked a
knowing head, with a cruel beak full of egg, and flirted
a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the last
morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for
the bluejay is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid
no attention to the distraught mother-bird, fluttering
and crying on a limb nearby.
“Gosh, pal, I ’ve sure had some meal!” said the blue-
jay to John Flint. “Chase that skirt, over there, please
— she makes too much noise to suit me ! ”
But for once John Flint wasn’t a friend to a bluejay
—he uttered an exclamation of sorrow and dismay.
“My nest!” he cried tragically. “My beautiful nest
with the four eggs, that I ’ve been watching day by day!
And the little mother-thing that knew me, and let me
touch her, and feed her, and wasn’t afraid of me! Oh,
you blue devil! You thief! You murderer!” And in
a great gust of sorrow and anger he lifted his stick to
hurl it at the criminal. Laurence caught the upraised
arm.
“But he doesn’t know he ’s a thief and a murderer,”
said he, and looked at the handsome culprit with un-
willing admiration. The jay, having finished the nest
to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb and
turned his attention to us. He screamed at Laurence,
thrusting forward his impudent head; while the poor
robbed mother, with lamentable cries, watched him from
a safe distance. Full of his cannibal meal, Mister Blue-
jay callously ignored her. He was more interested in us.
Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine wings, a
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- NESTS 149
spreading of barred tail, just above' Hint’s head, and
talked jocularly to bis friend in jayese.
“You ’re a thief and a robber!’* raged the Butterfly
Man. “You ’re a damn little bird-killer, that ’s what
you are ! I ought to wring your neck for you, and I ’d
do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good. But
it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t bring back the lost eggs nor
the spoiled nest, either. Besides, you don’t know any
better. You ’re what you are because you were hatched
like that, and there was n’t Anything to tell you what ’s
right and wrong for a decent bird to do. The best one
can do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch
out that you can’t do more mischief.’’
The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one
side, cocked his bright black eye knowingly, and passed
derisive remarks. Any one who has listened attentively
to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the gift of
articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him ; he
is a hooligan of a bird. He lifted his wings like half-
playful fists. If he had fingers, be sure a thumb had been
lifted profanely to his nose.
The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in
silence ; a furrow came to his forehead.
“Damn little thief!” he muttered. “And you don’t
even have to care ! No ! It ’s not right. There ought
to be some way to save the mothers and the nests from
your sort — without having to kill you, either. But good
Lord, how? That ’s what I want to know!”
“Beat ’em to it and stand ’em off,” said Laurence,
staring at the ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the
gorged impenitent thief. “ ‘Git thar fustest with the
mostest men.’ Have the nests so protected the thief
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SLIPPY McGEE
can’t get in without getting caught. Build Better Bird
Houses, say, and enforce a Law of the Garden — Boom
and Food for all, Pillage for None. You ’d have to ex-
pect some spoiled nests, of course, for you couldn’t be
on guard all the time, and you couldn’t make all the
birds live in your Better Bird Houses — they wouldn’t
know how. But you ’d save some of them, at any
rate.”
“Think so?” said John Flint. “Huh! And what ’d
you do with himf ” And he jerked his head at the
screaming jay.
“Let him alone, so long as he behaved. Shoo him out-
side when he did n’t — and see that he kept outside,” said
Laurence. “You see, the idea isn’t so much to reform
bluejays — it ’s to save the other birds from them.”
John Flint’s face was troubled. “It ’s all a muddle,
anyhow,” said he. “You can’t blame the bluejay,
because he was bom so, and it ’s bluejay nature
to act like that when it gets the chance. But there ’s
the other bird — it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to
come into a little nest like that, that she ’d been brooding
on, and twittering to, and feeling so good and so happy
about — Man, I ’d have given a month’s work and pay
to have saved that nest! It ’s not fair. God! Isn’t
there some way to save the good ones from the bad
ones?”
There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring rue-
fully at the wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down
that had been a wee home ; and with more of sorrow than
anger at the feathered crook who had done the damage.
The thing was slight in itself, and more than common —
just one of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily
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NESTS
« 161
engulf the Little Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly’s
wing save him alive ; and so I did not doubt 'now that a
little bird’s nest could weigh down the balance which
would put him definitely upon the side of good and of
God.
“I think there is a way,” said Laurence, gravely,
“and that is to beat them to it and stand them off. All
the rest is talk and piffle — the only way to save is to
save. There are no halfway measures ; also, it ’s a life-
time job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and
misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and some-
times even worse things yet. But you do manage \o
sometimes save the nests and the fledglings, and you do
sometimes escape the pain of hearing the mothers la-
menting. And that ’s the only reward a decent mortal
ought to hope for. I reckon it ’s about the best reward
there is, this side of heaven.”
The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously.
“You ’ve got a devil of a way of twisting things into
parables. I ’m talking birds and thinking birds, and
here you must go and make my birds people ! I was n’t
thinking about people — that is, I was n’t, until you have
to go and put the notion into my. head. It ’s not fair.
The thing ’s bad enough already, without your lugging
folks into it and making it worse!”
Laurence looked at him steadily. “You ’ve got to
think of people, when you see things like that,” said he,
slowly; “otherwise you only half-see. I have to think
/ of people — of kids, particularly — and their mothers.”
He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden,
with its sunny spaces, and its shrubs and flowers, and
trees, to where, over in the sky a pillar of smoke rose
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SLIPPY McGEE
steadily, endlessly, and merged into a cloud overhang-
ing the quiet little town.
“The pillar of cloud by day,” said he “that leads the
ehildren — ” He stopped, and the whimsical smile faded
from his face; his jaw set.
The bluejay, having exhausted his vocabulary of jay-
ribaldry, screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate
into Flint’s ears, shut up his tail like a fan, and darted
off, a streak of blue and gray. The Butterfly Man’s
eyes followed him smilelessly ; then they came back and
dwelt for a moment upon the ruined nest and the flut-
tering mother-bird, still vexing the ear with her shrill
lamentable futile protests. From her his eyes went, out
over the trees and flowers to that pillar mounting lazily
and inevitably into the sky. For a long moment he
stared at that, too, fixedly. After an interval he clenched
his hand upon his stick and struck the ground.
“ Nothing ’$ got any business to break up a nest! I ’d
rather sit up all night and watch than see what I *ve
just seen and listen to that mother-thing calling to
Something that ’s far-off and stone deaf and can’t hear
nor heed. Why, the little birds haven’t got even the
chance to get themselves borh, much less grow up and
sing! I — Say, you two go on a bit. I feel mighty
bad about this. I ’d been watching her. She knew me.
She let me feed her. If only I ’d thought about the
jay, why, I might have saved her. But just when she
needed me I wasn ’t there!” He turned abruptly, and
strode off toward his own rooms. Kerry followed with
a drooping head and tail. But Laurence looked after
him hopefully.
“Padre, the Butterfly Man ’s seen something this mom-
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158
ing that will sink to the bottom of his soul and stay there :
didn’t you see his eyes? Now, which of those two have
taught him the most — the happy thief and murderer,
or the innocent unhappy victim ? The bluejay ’s not a
whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he ’s all the
better off, for his stomach is full and his mischief satis-
fied, and that ’s all that ever worries a bluejay. And
there is n’t any redress for the mother-bird. The thing ’s
done, and can’t be undone. But between them they ’ve
shown John Flint something that forces a man to take
sides. Doesn’t the bluejay deserve some little credit
for that ? And is there ever any redress for the mother-
bird, Padre?”
“Why, the Church teaches — ” I began.
Laurence nodded. “Yes, Padre, I know all that. But
it can’t teach away what ’s always happening here and
now. At least not to the Butterfly Man and me, . . .
nor yet the mother-birds, Padre. No. We want to be
shown how to head off the bluejays.”
We walked along in silence, his hand upon my arm.
His eyes were clouded with the vision that beckoned
him. As for me, I was wondering just where, and how
far, that bluejay was going to lead John Flint.
It led him presently to my mother. All men learn
their great lessons from women and in stress the race
instinctively goes back to be taught by the mothers of
it. There were long intimate talks between herself and
the Butterfly Man, to which Laurence was also called.
In her quiet way Madame knew by heart the whole mill
district, good, bad and indifferent, for she was a woman
among the women. She had supported wives parting
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from dying husbands ; she had hushed the cries of fright-
ened children, whije I gave the last blessings to mothers
whose feet were already on the confines of another world ;
she had taken dead children from frenzied women’s arms.
Just as the Butterfly Man had shown the country folks
to Laurence, so now Madame showed them both the mill
folks, the poor folks, the foreigners in a small town dis-
dainful of them ; and she did it with the added keenness
of her womans eyes and the diviner kindness of her
woman’s heart.
The little lady had enormous influence in the parish.
And as ^Laurence ’s plans and hopes and ambitions un-
folded before her, she threw this potent influence, with
all it implied, in the scale of the young lawyer’s favor.
They began their work at the bottom, as all great move-
ments should begin. What struck me with astonishment
was that so many quiet women seemed to be ready and
waiting, as for a hoped for message, a bugle-call in the
dawn, for just that which Laurence had to tell them.
“A fellow with pull behind him,” said John Flint,
“is what you might call a pretty fair probability. But
a fellow with the women behind him is a steam-roller.
There ’s nothing to do but clear the road and keep from
under.” And when he went on his rounds among the
farm houses now it wasn’t only the men and children
he talked to. There was a message for the overworked
women, the wives and daughters who had all the pains
and none of the profits. Westmoreland, who had been
a rather lonesome evangelist for many years, of a sudden
found himself backed and supported by younger and
stronger forces.
The work was done very noiselessly; there was no
#
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outward disturbances, yet ; but the women were in deadly
earnest; there ; were far, far too many small graves in
our cemetery, and they were being taught to ask why
the children who filled them hadn’t had a fair chance f
The men might smile at many things, but fathers
couldn’t smile when mothers of lost children wanted
to know why Appleboro hadn’t better milk and sani-
tation. And there, under their eyes bulked the huge
red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch
went up the smoke of sacrifice.
Behind all this gathering of forces stood an almost
unguessed figure. Not the lovely white-haired lady of
the Parish House ; not big Westmoreland ; not handsome
Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Kuth with a suf-
frage button on her black basque; but a limping man
in gray tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over
his eyes and a butterfly net in his hand. That net
was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand the
naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his
proper place.
Keener, shrewder far than any of us, no one, save
I alone, guessed the part it pleased him to play. Lau-
rence was hailed as the Joshua who was to lead all
Appleboro into the promised land of better paving, better
lighting, better schools, better living conditions, better
city government — a better Appleboro. Behind Laurence
stood the Butterfly Man.
He seldom interfered 'with Laurence’s plans ; but every
now and then he laid a finger unerringly upon some weak
point which, unnoticed and uncorrected, would have
made those plans barren of result. He amended and
suggested. I have seen him breathe upon the dry bones
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of a project and make it live. It satisfied that odd sar-
donic twist in him to stand thus obscurely in the back-
ground and pull the strings. I think, too, that there
must have been in his mind, since that morning he had
watched the bluejay destroy his nest, some obscure sense
of restitution. Once, in the dark, he had worked for
evil. Still keeping himself hidden, it pleased him now
to work for good. So there he sat in his workroom, and
cast filaments here and there, and spun a web which
gradually netted all Appleboro.
There was, for instance, the Clarion . We had had
but that one newspaper in our town from time im-
memorial. I suppose it might have been a fairly good
county paper once, — but for some years it had splut-
tered so feebly that one wondered how it survived at all.
In spite of this, nobody in our county could get himself
decently bom or married, or buried, without a due and
proper notice in the Clarion . To the country folks an
obituary notice in its columns was as much a matter
of form as a clergyman at one’s obsequies. It simply
wasn’t respectable to be buried without proper com-
ment in the Clarion . Wherefore the paper always
held'open half a column for obituary notices and poetry.
These dismal productions had first brought the
Clarion to Mr. Flint’s notice. He used to snigger
at sight of the paper. He said it made him sure the
dead walked. He cut out all those lugubrious and home-
made verses and pasted them in a big black scrapbook.
He had a fashion of strolling down to the paper’s office
and snipping out all such notices and poems from its
country exchanges. A more ghoulish and fearsome
collection than he acquired I never elsewhere beheld. It
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was a taste which astonished me. Sometimes he would
gleefully read aloud one which particularly delighted
him :
“A fehristian wife and offspring seven
Mourn for John Peters who has gone to heaven.
But as for him we are sure he can weep no more,
He is happy with the lovely angels on that bright shore.*
My motherwas horrified. She said, severely, that she
could n’t to save her life see why any mortal man should
snigger because a Christian wife and children seven
mourned for John Peters who had gone to heaven. The
Butterfly Man looked up, meekly. And of a sudden my
mother stopped short, regarded him with open mouth
and eyes, and retired hastily. He resumed his pasting.
“I ’ve got a hankering for what you might call grave
poetry,” said he, pensively. “Yes, sir; an obituary like
that is like an all-day sucker to me. Say, don’t you
reckon they make the people they ’re written about feel
glad they ’re dead and done for good with folks that
could spring something like that on a poor stiff? Wait a
minute, parson — you can’t afford to miss Broken-hearted
Admirer :
“Miss Matty, I watched thee laid in the gloomy grave’s embrace,
Where nobody can evermore press your hand or your sweet face.
When you were alive I often thought of thee with fond pride,
And meant to call around some night A ask you to be my loving
Bride.
"But alas, there is a sorrowful sadness in my bosom to-day.
For I never did it & now can never really know what you
would say.
Miss Matty, the time may come when I can remember thee as a
brother,
* Heaven.
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SLIPPY McGEE
And lay my fond true heart at the loving feet of another.
For though just at present I can do nothing hut sigh A groan.
The Holy Bible tells us it is not good for a man to dwell alone.
But even though, alas, 1 ’m married, my poor heart will still be
true.
And oft in the lone night I will wake A weep to think she never
can be you.”
— “A Bboken-heabted Admires.”
“Ain’t that sad and sweet, though?” said the But-
terfly Man admiringly. “Don’t you hope those loving
feet "will be extra loving when Broken-hearted make** ’em
a present of his fond heart, parson? Wouldn’t it be
something fierce if they stepped on it! Gee, I cried
in my hat when I first read that!” Now wasn’t it a
curious coincidence that, even as Madame, I regarded
John Flint with open mouth and eyes, and retired
hastily?
For some time the Clarion had been getting worse
and worse ; heaven knows how it managed to appear on
time, and we expected each issue to be its last. It
wasn’t news to Appleboro that it was on its last legs.
I was not particularly interested in its threatened demise,
not having John Flint’s madness for its obituaries; but
he watched it narrowly.
“Did you know,” he remarked to Laurence, “that the
poor old Clarion is ready to bust? It will have to write
a death-notice for itself in a week or two, the editor
told me this morning.”
“So?” Laurence seemed as indifferent as I.
The Butterfly Man shot him a freighted glance.
“Folks in this county will sort of miss the Clarion,
he reflected. “After all, it ’s the one county paper.
Seems to me,” he mused, “that if I were going in head,
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NESTS 169
neck and cro]> for the sweet little job of reformer*
general, I ’d first off get me a grappling-hook on my
town’s one newspaper. Particularly when grappling-
hooks were going cheap.”
“Hasn’t Inglesby got a mortgage on itl”
“If he had would he let it die in its bed so nice
and ladylike? Not much! It ’d kick out the footboard
and come alive. Inglesby must be getting rusty in the
joints not to reach out for the Clarion himself, right
now. Maybe he figures it ’s not worth the price. Maybe
he knows this town so well he ’s dead sure nobody that
buys a newspaper here would have the nerve to print
anything or think anything he did n’tapprove of. Yes,
I guess that ’s it.”
“Which is your gentle way,” cut in Laurence, “of
telling me I ’d better hustle out and gather in the
Clarion before Inglesby beats me to it, isn’t it!”
“Me?” The Butterfly Man looked pained. “I ’m
not telling you to buy anything. I ’m only thinking
of the obituaries. Ask the parson. I ’m — I ’m addicted
to ’em, like some people are to booze. But if you *d
promise to keep open the old corner for them, why, I
might come out and beg you to buy the Clarion, now
it ’s going so cheap. Yep — all on account of the obitu-
aries!” And he murmured:
“Our dear little Johnny was left alive
To reach the interesting age of five
When — ”
“That ’s just about as much as I can stand of that,
my son!” said I, hastily.
“The parson ’s got an awful tender heart,” the But-
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160 SLIPPY McGEE
terfly Man explained and Laurence was graceless enough
to grin.
“Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think
Inglesby would be brute enough to choke out my pet
column, or make folks pay for it, and things like that
have n’t got any business to have price tags on ’em. So
I got to thinking of you. You ’re young and tender;
also a college man ; and you ’re itching to wash and
iron Appleboro — ’ ’ he took off his glasses and wiped them
delicately and deliberately.
“Did you also get to thinking,” said Laurence, crisply,
“that I ’m just about making my salt at present, and
still you ’re suggesting that I tie a dead old newspaper
about my neck and jump overboard ! One might fancy
you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!”
he finished with a touch of tartness.
The Butterfly Man smiled ever so gently.
“The Clarion is the county paper,” he explained
patiently. “It was here first. It ’s been here a long
time, and people are used to it. It knows by heart
how they think and feel and how they want to be told
they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina
people when it comes right down to prying them loose
from something they ’re used to!” He paused, to let
that sink in.
“There ’s no reason why the Clarion should keep
on being a dead one, is there! There ’s plenty room
for a live daily right here and now, if it was run right.
Why, this town ’s blue-molded for a live paper ! Look
here: You go buy the Clarion. It won’t cost you
much. Believe me, you ’ll find it mighty handy — power
of the press, all the usual guff, you know! I sha’n’t
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161
have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you dollars to
doughnuts some people will wake up some morning
worrying a whole lot about editorials. Mayne — people
like to think they think what they think themselves.
They don’t. They think what their home newspapers
tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to
get the town ear and shout into it good and loud.”
A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro
by purchasing the moribund Clarion . They didn’t
have to go into debt for it, either. They got it for an
absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs, that
anything paid for that rag was too much.
“Nevertheless,” said the Butterfly Man to me, com-
placently, “that ’s the little jimmy that ’s going to grow
up and crack some fat cribs. Watch it grow!”
I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubt-
ful. It was true that the Clarion immediately showed
signs of reviving life. And that Jim Dabney, a college
friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced to
accept the rather precarious position of editor and man-
ager, wrote pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set
us all to talking.
I suppose it was because it really had something to
say, and that something very pertinent to our local
interests and affairs, that we learned and liked to quote
the Clarion. It made a neat appearance in new black
type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer,
louder note, which made itself heard over the whole
county. The county merchants and farmers began
once more to advertise in its pages, as John Flint, who
watched it jealously — feeling responsible for Laurence’s
purchase of it — was happy to point out.
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SLIPPY McGEE
One thing, too, became more and more evident. The
women were behind the Clarion in a solid phalanx.
They knew it meant for them a voice which spoke articu-
lately and publicly, an insistent voice which must be
answered. It noticed every Mothers’ Meeting, Dorcas
activity, Ladies’ Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gather-
ing; s^oke respectfully of the suffragists and hopefully
of the “public-spirited women” of the new Civic League. .
And never, never, never ooldtted nor misplaced nor
misspelled a name ! The boy from up-state saw to that.
He was wily as the serpent and simple as the dove.
Over the local page appeared daily:
"Let’s Get Together ! ”
After awhile we took him at his word and tried to . . .
and things began to happen in Appleboro.
“Here,” said the Butterfly Man to me, “is where the
bluejay begins to get his.”
For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were
asking harassed and embarrassed men certain questions
concerning certain things which ladies hadn’t been sup-
posed to know anything about, much less worry their
heads over, since the state was a state. So determined
were the women to have these questions fairly answered
that they presently asked them in cold print, on the
front page of the town paper. And Laurence told them.
He had appalling lists and figures and names and dates.
The “chiel among us takin’ notes” printed them. Dab-
ney’s editorial comments were barbed.
Now there are mills in the South which do obey the
state laws and regulations as to hours, working condi-
tions, wages, sanitation, safety appliances, child labor.
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NESTS 168
But there are others which do not. Ours notoriously
did n’t.
John Flint and my mother had had many a con-
ference about deplorable cases which both knew, but
were powerless to change. The best they had been
able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and
facts and dates, but precious little had been accom-
plished for the welfare of the mill people, for those who
might have helped had been too busy, or perhaps un-
willing, to listen or to act.
But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready
and ripe to hear now what Madame had to tell. At one
meeting, therefore, she took the floor and told them.
When she had finished they named a committee to
investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.
That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness,
and the committee’s final report was very unpleasant
reading. But the names signed to it were so unassail-
able, the facts so incontrovertible, that Dabney thought
best to print it in full, and later to issue it in pamphlet
form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing
now, and it is always quoted when similar investigations
are necessary elsewhere.
It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report
and had rewritten and revised it, and clothed it with
a terrible earnestness and force. Its plain words were
alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I heard
... a blue jay’s ribald screech . . . and the heart-
rending and piercing cries of a little brown motherbird
whose nest had been ravaged and destroyed.
Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes.
That such things could be occurring here, in this pleasant
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SLIPPY McGEE
little place, in the shadow of their churches, within
reach of their homes! No one dared to even question
the truth of that report, however, and it went before
the Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly
called Mr. Inglesby before it. They were polite to him,
of course, but Jhey did manage to ask him some very
unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they did
manage to impress upon him that certain things men-
tioned in the Civic League's report must not be allowed
to reoccur. One juror — he was a planter — had even had
the temerity to say out loud the ugly word “pene-
tentiary.’’
Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was
a man of large interests and he had to leave a great
deal to the discretion of superintendents and foremen.
It might be, yes, he could understand how it might
lery well be — that his confidence had been abused. He
would look into these things personally hereafter. Why,
he was even now busily engaged compiling a “Book of
Rules for Employees." He deplored the almost uni-
versal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign.
Very. Due almost entirely to agitators, too.
He did n’t come out of that investigation without some
of its slime sticking to him, and this annoyed and irri-
tated and enraged him more than we guessed, for we
hadn’t as yet learned the man’s ambition. Also,
the women kept following him up. They meant to make
him comply with the strict letter of the law, if that
were humanly possible.
He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he
presently called on my mother and offered her whatever
aid he could reasonably give. Her work was invalu-
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165
able; his foremen and superintendents had instructions
to give her any information she asked for, to show her
anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report
to headquarters any suggestions as to the — er — younger
employees, she might be kind enough to make. If that
were not enough she might, he suggested, call on him
personally. Really, one could rrt but admire the savoir
faire of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible,
until one happened to catch of a sudden that hard and
ruthless gleam which, in spite of all his caution, would
leap at times into his cold eyes.
“Is he, or isn’t he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or
are such men self -deceived?” mused my mother, pucker-
ing her brows. “He will do nothing, I know, that he
can well avoid. But — he gave me of his own accord
his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor con-
sumptive Shivers woman.”
“She contracted her disease working in his mill and
living in one of his houses on the wages he paid her,”
said I, “I might remind you to beware of the Greeks
when they come bearing gifts.”
“Proverb for proverb,” said she. “The hair of the
dog is good for its bite.”
“Fifty dollars isn’t much for a woman’s life.”
“Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape
of milk and ice and eggs. When it ’s gone — if poor
Shivers isn’t — I shall take the Baptist minister’s wife
and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and ask
him for another check. He ’ll give it.”
“You ’ll make him bitterly repent ever having suc-
cumbed to the temptation of appearing charitable,”
said I.
i
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SLIPPY McGEE
We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had
other methods of attack less pleasant than offering checks
for charity. Its two largest advertisers simultaneously
withdrew their advertisements from the Clarion.
“Let ’s think this thing out ,” said John Flint to
Laurence. “Cutting out ads is a bad habit. It costs
good money. It should be nipped in the bud. You Ve
got to go after advertisers like that and make ’em see
the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what ’s that
thing you were saying the other day — the thing I asked
you to read over, remember!”
“When the scomer is punished, the simple is made
wise ; and when the wise is instructed, he receiveth
knowledge I quoted Solomon.
“That ’s it, exactly. You see,” he explained, “there ’s
always the right way out, if you ’ve got sense enough
to find it. Only you mustn’t get rattled and try to
make your getaway out the wrong door or the front
window — that spoils things. The parson ’s given you the
right tip. That old chap Solomon had a great bean on
him, didn’t he!”
A few days later there appeared, in the space which
for years had been occupied by the bigger of the two
advertisements, the following pleasant notice:
People Who Disapprove of
Civic Cleanliness,
A Better Town,
Better Kiddies,
and
A Square Deal for Everybody,
Also
Disapprove of
Advertising in the Clarion.
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NESTS 161
And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was
headed :
OBITUARIES
That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly
Man reveled appeared in that column thereafter. It
was a conspicuous space, and the horn of rural mourning
in printer’s ink was exalted among us. It was not very
hard to guess whose hand had directed those counter*
blows.
When we met those two advertisers on the street
afterward we greeted them with ironical smiles intended
to enrage. They had at Inglesby’s instigation been
guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind the
Clarion had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage.
It had simply never occurred to either that a small town
editor might dare to “come back.” The impossible had
actually happened.
I think it was this slackening of his power which
alarmed Inglesby into action.
“Mr. Inglesby,” said the Butterfly Man to me one
night, casually, “has got him a new private secretary.
He came this afternoon. His name ’s Hunter — J. How*
ard Hunter. He dresses as if he wrote checks for a
living and he looks exactly like he dresses. Honest, he ’s
the original he-god they use to advertise suspenders and
collars and neverrips and that sort of thing in the classy
magazines. I bet you Inglesby ’s got to fork over a man-
sized bucket of dough per, to keep him. There ’ll be a
flutter of calico in this burg from now on, for that fellow
certainly knows how to wear his face. He ’s gilt-edged
from start to finish!”
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168 SLIPPY McGEE
Laurence, lounging on the steps, looked up with a
smile.
“His arrival,” said he, “has been duly chronicled in
to-day’s press. Cease speaking in parables, Bughunter,
and tell us what ’s on your mind.”
The Butterfly Man hesitated for a moment. Then :
“Why, it ’s this way,” said he, slowly. “I — hear
things. A bit' here and there, you see, as folks tell mfe.
1 1 put what I ’ve heard together, and think it over.
Of course I didn’t need anybody to tell me Inglesby
was sore because the Clarion got away from him.
He expected it to die. It didn’t. He thought it
wouldn’t pay expenses — well, the sheriff is n’t in charge
yet. And he knows the paper is growing. He ’s too
Wise a guy to let on he ’s been stung for fair, once in
his life, but he don’t propose to let himself in for any
more body blows. than he can help. So he looks about
a bit and he gets him an agent — older than you, Mayne,
but young enough, too — and even better looking. That
agent will be everywhere pretty soon. The town will fall
for him. Say, how many of you folks know what
Inglesby really wants, anyhow?”
“Everything in sight,” said Laurence promptly.
“And something around the comer, too. He wants
to come out in the open and be IT. He intends to be
a big noise in Washington. Gentlemen, Senator
Inglesby! Well, why not?”
“He hasn’t said so, has he?” Laurence was skep-
tical.
“He doesn’t have to say so. He means to be it,
and that ’s very much more to the point. However, it
happens that he did peep, once or twice, and it buzzed
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169
about a bit— and that ’s how I happened to catch it
in my net. This Johnny he ’s just got to help him
is the first move. Private Secretary now. Campaign
manager and press agent, later. Inglesby ’s getting
ready to march on to Washington. You watch him do
it!”
“Never!” said Laurence, and set his mouth.
“No!” The Butterfly Man lifted his eyebrows.
“Well, what are you going to do about it! Fight him
with your pretty little Clarion t It ’s not big enough,
though you could make it a handy sort of brick to
paste him in the eye with, if you aim straight and pitch
hard enough. Go up against him yourself! You ’re
not strong enough, either, young man, whatever you
may be later on. You can prod him into firing some
popr kids from his mills — but you can’t make him feed
’em after he ’s fired ’em, can you! And you can’t keep
him from becoming Senator Inglesby either, un-
less,” he paused impressively, “you can match him even
with a man his money and pull can ’t beat. Now think. ’ ’
The young man bit his lip and frowned. The Butter-
fly Man watched him quizzically through his glasses.
“Don’t take it so hard,” he grinned. “And don’t
let the whole salvation of South Carolina hang too heavy
on your shoulders. Leave something to God Almighty —
He managed to pull the cocky little brute through worse
and tougher situations than Inglesby ! Also, He ran the
rest of the world for a few years before you and I got
here to help Him with it.”
“You ’re a cocky brute yourself,” said Laurence,
critically.
“I can afford to be, because I can open my hand this
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SLIPPY McGEE
minute and show you the button. Why, the very man
you need is right in your reach ! If you could get him
to put up his name against Inglesby’s, the Big Un
wouldn’t be in it.”
Laurence stared. The Butterfly Man stared back at
him.
“Look here,” said he slowly. “You remember my
nest, and what that bluejay did for it! And what you
saidf Well, I ’ve looked about a bit, and I ’ve seen
the bluejay at work. . . . Oh, hell, I can’t talk about
this thing, but I ’ve watched the putty-faced, hollow-
chested, empty-bellied kids — that don’t even have guts
enough left to laugh. . . . Somebody ought to Sock it
to that brute, on account of those kids. He ought to
be headed off . . . make him feel he ’s to be shoo’d
outside! And I think I know the one man that can
shoo him.” He paused again, with his head sunk for-
ward. This was so new a John Flint to me that I
had no words. I was too lost in sheer wonder.
“The man I mean hates politics. I ’ve been told he
has said openly it ’s not a gentleman’s game any more.
You ’ve got to make him see it can be made one. You ’ve
got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him
see that, and he ’ll smash Inglesby.”
“You can’t mean — for heaven’s sake — ”
“I do mean. James Eustis.”
Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.
“Good Lord!” said he, “and I never even thought
of him in that light. Why . . . he ’d sweep every-
thing clean before him!”
I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. There-
fore politics do not interest me so keenly as they might
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another. But even to my slow mind the suitability of
Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just, sure,
kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the
plainer people all over the state leaned upon his judg-
ment. A pane shrewd man of large affairs, other able
men of affairs respected and admired him. The state,
knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished
for her farmers, what he meant to her agricultural in-
terests, admired and trnsted him. If Eustis wanted any
gift within the power of the people to give, he had but
to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my But-
terfly Man to show us this !
“Bughunter,” said Laurence, respectfully. “If you
ever take the notion to make me president, will you
stand behind and show me how to run the United States
on greased wheels?”
“I?” John Flint was genuinely astounded. “The
boy ’s talking in his deep : turn over — you ’re lying on
your back!”
“You won’t?”
“I will not!” said the Butterfly Man severely. “I
have got something much more important on my hands
than running states, I ’ll have you know. Lord, man,
I ’m getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty nearly
all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!”
I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child
of James Eustis putting in this man’s hand a gray
moth. I think he was remembering, too, for his eyes
of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that
was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled
fleetingly.
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CHAPTER X
THE BLUEJAY
W HEN Mary Virginia was graduated, my
mother sent her, to commemorate that very
important and pleasant occasion, one of her
few remaining treasures — a carved ivory fan which Le
Brun had painted out of his heart of hearts for one
of King Louis’ loveliest ladies. It still exhaled, like a
whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.
“I have a fancy,” wrote my mother to Mary Vir-
ginia, * ‘that having been pressed against women’s
bosoms and held in women’s hands, having been, as it
were, symbols which expressed the hidden emotions of
the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been enabled
to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of
memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long
years in those carved and scented boxes which are like
little tombs, they remember the lights and the flowers
and the perfumes, the glimmer and gleam of jewels
and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the laughter and
whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled
sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used
to brush them lightly; and the poor things wonder a
bit wistfully what has become of all that gay and lovely
life, all that perished bravery and beauty that once
they knew. So I am quite sure this apparently soul-
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THE BLUEJAY \
178
less bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel again the
touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before
gay and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent
over it once more.
“Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend’s
love. Use it in your happy hours, dream over it a
Uttle, sigh lightly; and then smile to remember that
this is your Hour, that you are young, and life and
love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles
that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and
bright space our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret,
before your time to know it? Youth alone is eternal
and immortalt How do I know? ‘Et Ego in Arcadia
vixil* ”
Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward,
and I have inserted it here, although I suppose it really
ifcn’t at all relevant. But I shall let it stand, because
it is so like my mother!
John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful
tray with handles and border of hammered and twisted
copper. The tray itself was covered with a layer of
silvery thistle-down ; and on this, hovering above flowers,
some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed,
so carefully was the work done, that you might fancy
only the glass which covered them kept them from
escaping.
“You will remember telling me, when you were going
away to grow up,” wrote John Flint, “to watch out
for any big fine fellows that came by of a morning,
because they ’d be messengers from you to the Parish
House people. Big and little they Ve come, and I Ve
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SLIPPY McGEE
played like they were all of them your carriers. So
you see we had word of you every single day of all
these years you 've been gone ! Now I ’m sending one or
two of them back to you. Please play like my tray ’a
a million times bigger and finer and that it ’s all loaded
down with good messages and hopes; and believe that
still it would n’t be half big enough to hold all the good
wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I be-
long, and so does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand
of your old friend,
The Butterfly Man.
Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she
was so delighted with it, and so proud of it. I like
its English very well, but I like its Irishness even better.
But, although she had at last finished and done with
school, Mary Virginia did n’t come home to us as we had
hoped she would. Her mother had other plans, which
failed to include little Appleboro. “Why should a girl
with such connections and opportunities be buried in
a little town when great cities waited for just such
with open and welcoming arms? The best we got then
was a photograph of our girl in her graduation frock —
a slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear
angular youthfulness still clinging to her.
- It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after
awhile, of the girl’s later triumphant progress; the
sensation she created, the bored world bowing to her
feet because she brought it, along with name and wealth,
so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain
autocratic old Aunt of her mother’s, a sort of awful
high priestess in the inmost shrine of the sacred elect;
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175
this Begum, delighted with her young kinswoman,
ordered the rest of her world to be likewise delighted,
and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia
fared very well. She was'feted, photographed, and para-
graphed. Her portrait, painted by a rather obscure
young man, made the painter famous. In the hands of
the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a great beauty.
The photograph that presently came to us quite took
our breath away, she was so regal.
“She will never, never again be at home in little
Appleboro," said my mother, regretfully. “That dear,
simple, passionate, eager child we used to know has gone
forever — life has taken her. This beautiful creature's
place is not here — she belongs to a world where the
women wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings'
orders. No, we could never hope to hold her any more."
“But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even
more than those fine ladies with tiaras and titles and
those fine gentlemen with orders, whom your fancy con-
jures up for her," said I crisply, for her words stung.
They found an echo in my own heart.
“Love her? Oh, but of course! But — love counts
for very, very little in the world which claims Mary
Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles him." I was
silent. I knew.
As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and
turned red.
“Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send her
a few butterflies last year . . . told her to play like
they meant more! I somehow couldn't get the notion
in my head that she 'd grown up. ... I never could
think of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I
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SLIPPY McGEE
could n't seem to bear the idea of her ever being any-
thing else but what she was. Well . . . she 's not, any
more. And I 've had the nerve to give a few insects to
the Queen of Sheba!”
“Bosh!” said Laurence, sturdily. “She ought to be
glad and proud to get that tray, and I 'll bet you Mary
Virginia 's delighted with it. She 's her father's daugh-
ter as well as her mother's, please. As for Appleboro
/ not being good enough for her, that 's piffle, too, p'tite
Madame, and I 'm surprised at you ! Her own town is
good enough for any girl. If it is n't, let her just pitch
in and help make it good enough, if sjie 's worth her
salt. Not that Mary Virginia is n't scrumptious, though.
Lordy, who 'd think this was the same kid that used to
bump my head?”
“She turns heads now, instead of bumping them,”
said my mother.
“Oh, she 's not the only head-turner Appleboro can
boast of ! ” said the young man grandly. “We Ve always
been long on good-lookers in Carolina, whatever else
we may lack. They 're like berries in their season.”
“But the berry season is short and soon over, my
son: and there are seasons when there are no berries
at all — except preserved ones,” suggested my mother,
with that swift, curious cattiness which so often astounds
me in even the dearest of women.
“Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!” chortled
Laurence. “I '11 grant you that Mary Virginia 's the
biggest berry in the patch, at the height of a full season.
But look at her getup! Don't doodads and fallals, and
hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls
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THE BLUEJAY
ITT
and such, count for something? How about Claire Dex-
ter, for instance? She mayn’t have a Figure like her
Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire up
like this? A flirt she was boro and a flirt she will die,
but isn’t she a perfect peach? That reminds me — that
ungrateful minx gave two dances rightfully mine to Mr.
Howard Hunter last 1 night. I did n’t raise any ruc-
tions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn’t much
blame her. That fellow really knows how to dance, and
the way he can convey to a girl the impression that he 's
only alive on her account makes me gnash my teeth
with green-and-hlue envy. No wonder they all dote on
him! No home complete without this handsome orna-
ment!” he added.
My mother’s lips came firmly together.
“It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a
rather blase brunette,” she remarked crisply. “I am
absolutely certain that if you could catch the devil
without his mask you ’d find him a perfect blonde.”
“Nietzsche’s blonde beast, then?” suggested Laurence,
amused at her manner.
“That same blonde beast is perhaps the most mag-
nificent of animals,” I put in. For alone of my house-
hold I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby’s secretary.
He was the only man I have ever known to whom the
term ‘beautiful’ might be justly applied, and at the
word’s proper worth. Such a man as this, a two-
handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a wolfskin
across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side
the helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one
out of many a red, red page of the past with just such
blue, dangerous, and cloudless eyes. Rolling and reek-
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SLIPPY McGEE
ing decks have known him, and falling walls, and
shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas,
and drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and ter-
rible hymns to Odin Allfather in the midwatches of
Northern nights.
He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his
ostensible reason being my work among his mill-people.
I think he liked me, later. At any rate, I had seen much
of him, and I was indebted to him for more than one
shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was
chilled by what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded
manner of viewing the whole great social question I was
nevertheless forced to admire the almost mathematical
perfection to which he had reduced his system.
“But you wish to deal with human beings as with
figures in a sum,” I objected once.
“Figures,” he smiled equably, “are only stubborn —
on paper. When they ’re alive they ’re fluid and any
clever social chemist can reduce them to first principles.
It ’s really very simple, as all great things are : When in
doubt, reach the stomach t There you are ! That ’s the
universal eye-opener.”
“My dear friend,” he added, laughing, “don’t look
so horrified. 7 didn’t make things as they are. Per-
sonally, I might even prefer to say, like Mr. Fox in the
old story, ‘It was not so. It is not so. And Qod forbid
it should be sol * But I can’t, truthfully, and there-
fore — I don’t. I aceept what I can't help. Self-preser-
vation, we all admit, is the first law of nature. Now
I consider myself, and the class I represent, as beings
much more valuable to the world than, let ’s say, your
factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
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THE BLUEJAY
179
and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise,
I should most unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law,
religion, civilization itself, put into my hands, without
compunction and possibly what some cavilers might call
without mercy; having at stake a very vital issue — the
preservation of my land, the protection of my class
against Demos.”
He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly
with his fine intelligent eyes: there was even much of
truth in his frank statement of his case. Always has
Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining within; while
without the doors of the sick civilization he has brought
about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No,
this man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps,
I might have argued even thus myself, and done so
with a clean conscience. This man was merely an oppor-
tunist. I knew he would never “reach their stomachs”
unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming,
things had changed greatly at the mills, and for the
better.
“The day of the great god Qouge,” he had said to
Inglesby, “is passing. It ’s bad business to overwork
and underpay your hands into a state of chronic insur-
rection. That means losing time and scamping work.
The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter
of any one man’s private pleasure or conscience — it ’s
cold hard common sense and sound scientific business.
You get better results, and that ’s what you ’re after.”
Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that
time, very little to amuse and interest that keen mind of
his, that the Butterfly Man amused and interested Hunter
so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was, even he could
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SLIPPY McGEE
not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
men to John Flint. ,
He was delighted with our collection. He could appre-
ciate its scope and value, something to which all Apple-
boro else paid but passing heed. John Flint declared
that most folks came to see our butterflies just as they
would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded
lady — merely for something to see. But this man’s
appreciation and praise were both sincere and encour-
aging. And as he never allowed anything or any-
body unusual or interesting to pass him by without
at least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of
strolling over to the Parish House to talk with the limp-
ing man who had come there a dying tramp, was now a
scientist, with the manner and appearance of a gentle-
man, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds.
That this once black sheep had strayed of his own will
and pleasure from some notable fold Hunter did n’t for a
moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he wouldn't have
been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed
into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the
fatted calf dressed for him by a chef whose salary might
have hired three college professors. Hunter had known
one or two such black sheep in his time ; he fancied him-
self none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint’s rather
obvious secret.
My mother watched the secretary’s comings and go-
ings at the Parish House speculatively. Not even the
fact that he quoted her adored La Rochefoucauld, in
flawless French, softened her estimate.
“If he even had the semblance of a heart!” said she,
regretfully* “But he is all head, that one.”
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THE BLUEJAY
181
Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and
handsome man of the world delighted me. To me im-
mured in a mill town he brought the modem world’s
best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.
“That great blonde!” said Madame, wonderingly.
“He is so designedly fascinating I wonder you fail to
see the wheels go ’round. However, let me admit that
I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and sus-
ceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might
exert over an ardent and unsophisticated heart!”
It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book,
making known to me a poet I had otherwise missed.
“You are sure to like Bridges,” he told me, “for the
sake of one verse. Have you ever thought why I like
you, Father De Ranee? Because you amuse me. I see
in you one of life’s subtlest ironies: A Greek beauty-
worshiper posing as a Catholic priest — in Appleboro!”
He laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his
resonant voice:
“I love all beautiful things:]
I seek and adore them.
God has no better praise.
And man in his hasty days,
Is honored for them.”
When at times the secretary brought his guests to
see what he pleasingly enough termed Appleboro ’s one
claim to distinction, the Butterfly Man did the honors
to the manner bom. Drawer after drawer and box after
box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming
far to see. Some of them had come to us from the
ends of the earth; from China and Japan and India
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SLIPPY McGEE
and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico
and South America and the isles of the Pacific; from
many and many a lonely missionary station had they
been sent us. Even as our collection grew, the library
covering it grew with it. But this was merely the most
showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon
which John Flint’s value and reputation were steadily
mounting, was in less lovely and more destructive forms
of insect life. Beside this last, a labor calling for the
most unremitting, painstaking, persevering research,
observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last
he was wringing from Nature’s reluctant fingers some
of her dearest and most deeply hidden secrets. He was
like Jacob, ( wrestling all night long with an unknown
angel, saying sturdily:
“I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name !”
Like Jacob, he paid the price of going halt for his
knowledge.
I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous
value of the naturalist’s work. But I fancy the silent
and absorbed student himself was to his mind the most
interesting specimen, the most valuable study. It
amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.
Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man’s lik-
ing for that unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have
seen him take a batch of them from his pocket as a
free-will offering. I have seen him, who had all French,
Russian and English literature at his fingers’ ends, sit
chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful
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THE BLUEJAY
18 S
collection of lugubrious verse and worse grammar; paus-
ing every now and then to cast a speculative and curious
glance at his impassive host, who, paying absolutely no
attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his
microscope.
“Why don’t you admire Mr. Hunter?” I was curi-
ous to know.
“But I do admire him.” Flint was sincere.
“Then if you admire him, .why don’t you like him?”
He reflected.
“X don’t like the expression of his teeth,” he admitted.
“They ’re too pointed. He looks like he ’d bite. I don’t
think he ’d care much who he bit, either; it would all de-
pend on who got in his way.”
Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his
work, stretched his legs under the table, and grinned
up at me.
“I ’m not saying he oughtn’t to put his best foot
foremost,” he agreed. “We ’d all do that, if we only
knew how. And I ’m not saying he ought to tell on
himself, or that anybody ’s got any business getting under
his guard. I don’t hanker to know anybody’s faults,
or to find out what they ’ve got up their sleeves besides
their elbows, unless I have to. Why, I ’d as soon ask
a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove he had n’t
got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I ’d be sure it
wasn’t fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck.
Personally I don’t want to air anybody’s bumps and
bunions. It ’s none of my business. I believe in collars
and shoes, myself. But if I see signs, I can believe all
by my lonesome they ’ve got ’em, can’t I?”
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SLIPPY McGEE
“Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are
really marvelous. A gentleman wears good shoes and
clean collars — wherefore, you don’t like the expression of
his teeth!” said I, ironically.
“Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel
good,” he offered brazenly. “For he may — and I sure
don’t.” His grin faded, the old pucker came to his
forehead.
“Parson, maybe the truth is I ’m not crazy over him
because people like him get people like me to seeing too
plainly that things are n’t fairly dealt out. "Why, think
a minute. That man ’s got about all a man can have,
hasn’t heT, In himself, I mean. And if there ’s any-
thing more he fancies, he can reach out and get it, can’t
he? Well, then, some folks might get to thinking that
folks like him — get more than they deserve. And some
. . . don’t get any more than they deserve,” he finished,
with grim ambiguity.
“Do you like him yourself!” he demanded, as I made
no reply.
“I admire him immensely.”
“Does Madame like him?” he came back.
“Madame is a woman,” I said, cautiously. “Also,
you are to remember that if Madame does n’t, she is only
one against many. All the rest of them seem to adore
him.”
“Oh, the rest of them!” grunted John Flint, and
scowled. “Huh! If it wasn’t for Madame and a few
more like her, I ’d say women and hens are the two
plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If
you don’t believe it, watch them stand around and cackle
over the first big dunghill rooster that walks on his
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V
THE BLUEJAY 185
•wings before them ! There are times when I could wring
their necks. Dem a fool, anyhow!” He wriggled in
his chair with impatience.
4 4 Liver,” said I, outraged. 4 4 You 'd better see Dr.
Westmoreland about it. When a man talks like you 're
talking now, it 's just one of two things — a liver out of
whack, or plain ugly jealousy.”
44 I do sound like I 've got a grouch, don't I?” he ad-
mitted, without shame. 4 4 Well . . . maybe it 's jeal-
ousy, and maybe it 's not. The truth is, he rubs me
rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why.
Maybe it 's because he 's so sure of himself. He can
afford to be sure. There isn’t any reason why he
shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings.” He looked
up at me, shrewdly. “Hte looks all right, and he sounds
all right, and maybe he might be all right — but, parson,
I 've got the notion that somehow he 's not!”
4 4 Good heavens ! Why, look at what the man has done
for the mill folks! Whatever his motives are, the re-
sult is right there, isn't it? His works praise him in
the gates!”
4 4 Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out
yet, friend. You just give him time. His sort don't
play to lose; they can't afford to lose; losing is the other
fellow's job. Parson, see here : there are two sides to all
things ; one of ’em 's right and the other 's wrong, and
a man 's got to choose between ’em. He can't help it.
He 's got to be on one side or the other, if he 's a man .
A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do right to
kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right side
any good if you 're standing flatfooted on the wrong
side, can you? No; you take sides according to what 's
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SLIPPY McGEE
in you. You know good and well one side is full of
near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors — the downand-
outers, the guys that never had a show, ditchers qnd
sewercleaners and sweatshoppers and mill hands and
shuckers, and overdriven mutts and starved women and
kids. It ’s sure one hell of a road, but there ’s got to be
a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world
wouldn’t take to it for choice, would they? Yet they
do ! Like Jesus Christ, say. They turn down the other
side cold, though it ’s nicer traveling. Why, you can hog
that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars
and the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want
to make you keep the speed laws. You have n’t got any
speed laws there. It ’s your road. You own it, see?
It ’s what it is because you ’ve made it so, just to please
yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it !
But — you lose out on that side even when you think
you ’ve won. You get exactly what you go after, but
you don’t get any more, and so you lose out. Why?
Because you ’re an egg-sucker and a nest-robber
and a shrike, and a four-flusher and a piker, that ’s
why!
“The first road don’t give you anything you can put
ycfar hands on; except that you think and hope maybe
there ’s that light at the end of it. But, parson, I guess
if you ’re man enough to foot it without a pay-envelope
coming in on Saturdays, why, it ’s plenty good enough
for me — and Kerry. But while I ’m legging it I ’ll keep
a weather eye peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-
god is one of ’em. You soak that in your thinking-tank :
he ’s one of ’em!”
“But look at what he’s doing!” said I, aghast
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THE BLUEJAY
\
187
44 What he ’s doing is good. Even Laurence could n’t ask
for more than good results, could he?”
The Butterfly Man smiled.
“Don’t get stung, parson. Why, you take me, my-
self. Suppose, parson, you ’d been on the other side,
like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose * you ’d
never stopped a minute, since you were bom, to think
of anything or anybody but yourself and your own
interests — where would I be to-day, parson ? Sup-
pose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug
biting you, like that skate ’s got? Why, what do you
suppose you ’d have done with little old Slippy ? I was
considerable good business to look at then, wasn’t I?
No. You ’ve got to have something in you that will let
you take gambler’s chances; you ’ve got to be willing to
bet the limit and risk your whole kitty on the one little
chance that a man will come out right, if you give him a
fair show, just because he is a man; or you can’t ever
hope to help just when that help ’s needed. Right
there is the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort
and the Hunter-men,” said John Flint, obstinately.
As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both
being in constant social demand. If Laurence did not
naturally gravitate toward that bright particular set of
rather rapid young people which presently formed itself
about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not dis-
like each other, though Hunter, from an older man’s
sureness of himself, was the more cordial of the two. I
fancy each watched the other more guardedly than either
would like to admit. They represented opposite inter-
ests; one might at any moment become inimical to the
other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed
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SLIPPY McGEE
to appear upon the calm unruffled surface of things.
If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been
a wise choice. For he was undoubtedly very popular,
and quite deservedly so. He had unassailable connec-
tions, as we all knew. He brought a broader culture,
which was not without its effect. And in spite of the
fact that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door
in Appleboro that was not open to him. Inglesby him-
self seemed a less sinister figure in the light of this
younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary
gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts
, and prejudices, sowing in their stead the seeds of
Inglesby ’s ambition and rehabilitation, in the open light
of day. He knew his work was well done; he was
sure of ultimate success; he had always been suc-
cessful, and there had been, heretofore, no one strong
enough to actively oppose him. He could therefore
afford to make haste slowly. Even had he been aware
of the Butterfly Man’s acrid estimate of him, it must
have amused him. When all was said and done, what
did a Butterfly Man — even such a one as ours — amount
to, in the world of Big Business t He had n’t stocks nor
bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn’t anything but a
personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-
growing name, a room full of insects in an old priest’s
garden. Of course Hunter would have smiled! And
there wasn’t a soul to tell him anything of Slippy
McGee!
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CHAPTER XI
A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
S UMMER stole out a-tiptoe, and October had come
among the live-oaks and the pines, and touched
the wide marshes and made them brown, and laid
her hand upon the barrens and the cypress swamps and
set them aflame with scarlet and gold. October is
not sere and sorrowful with us, but a ruddy and deep-
bosomed lass, a royal and free-hearted spender and giver
of gifts. Asters of imperial purple, golden rod fit for
kings’ scepters, march along with her in ever thinning
ranks; the great bindweed covers fences and clambers up
dying cornstalks; and in many a covert and beside the
open ditches the Gerardia swings her pink and airy
bells. All down the brown roads white lady ’s-lace and
yarrow and the stiff purple iron-weed have leaped into
bloom; under its faded green coat the sugar-cane shows
purple; and s* mac and sassafras and gums are afire.
The year’s last burgeoning of butterflies riots, a tangle
of rainbow coloring, dancing in the mellow sunshine.
And day by day a fine still deepening haze descends veil-
Hke over the landscape and wraps it in a vague melan-
choly which most sweetly invades the spirit. It is as if
one waits for a poignant thing which must happen.
Upon such a pc::.ect afternoon, I, reading my worn
old breviary under our great magnolia, heard of a sud-
189
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SLIPPY McGKE
den a voice of pure gold call me, very softly, by my
name; and looking up met eyes of almost unbelievable
blue, and the smile of a mouth splendidly young and red.
I suppose the tall girl standing before me was fash-
ionably and expensively clad; heaven knows I don’t
know what she wore, but I do know that whatever it was
it became her wonderfully; and although it seemed to me
very simple, and just what such a girl ought to wear, my
mother says you could tell half a mile away that those
clothes smacked of super-tailoring at its costliest. Hat
and gloves she held in her slim white ringless hand. One
thus saw her waving hair, framing her warm pale face in
living ebony.
“Padre!” said she* “Oh, dear, dear, Padre!” and
down she dropped lightly beside me, and cradled her
knees in her arms, and looked up, with an arch and ten-
der friendliness. That childish action, that upward
glance, brought back the darling child I had so greatly
loved. This was no Queen-of-Sheba, as John Flint had
thought. This was not the regal young beauty whose
photograph graced front pages. This was my own girl
come back. And I knew I had n’t lost Mary Virginia.
“I remembered this place, and I knew — I just knew
in my heart — you ’d be sitting here, with your breviary
in your hand. I knew just how you ’d be looking up,
every now and then, smiling at things because they ’re
lovely and you love them. So I stole around by the back
gate — and there you were!” said she, her eyes searching
me. “Padre, Padre, how more than good to see you
again ! And I ’m sure that ’s the same cassock I left you
wearing. You could wear it a couple of lifetimes without
getting a single spot on it — you were always such a de-
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A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
191
lightful old maid, Padre! Where and how is Madame t
Who ’s in the Guest Rooms 1 How is John Flint since
he ’s come to he a Notable ? Has Miss Sally Ruth still
got a Figure? How are the judge's cats, and the
major’s goatee? How is everything and everybody?”
“Did you know you 'd have to make room for me,
Padre? Well, you will. I picked up and fairly rap
away from everything and everybody, because the long-
ing for home grew upon me intolerably. When I was
in Europe, and I used to think that three thousand miles
of water lay between me and Appleboro, I used to cry
at nights. I hope John Flint’s butterflies told him what
I told them to tell him for me, when they came by!
How beautiful the old place looks ! Padre, you ’re thin.
Why will you work so hard? Why doesn’t somebody
stop you? And — you ’re gray, but how perfectly beau-
tiful gray hair is, and how thick and wavy yours is, too !
Gray hair was invented and intended for folks with
French blood and names. Nobody else can wear it half
so gracefully. Now tell me first of all you ’re glad as
glad can be to see me, Padre. Say you have n ’t forgotten
me — and then you can tell me everything else!”
She paused, fanned herself with her hat, and laughed,
looking up at me with her blue, blue eyes that were so
heavily fringed with black.
I was so startled by her sudden appearance — as if she
had walked out of my prayers, like an angel ; and, above
all, by that resemblance to the one long since dust and
unremembered of all men’s hearts save mine, that I
could hardly bear to look upon her. That other one
seemed to have stepped delicately out of her untimely
grave; to sit once more beside me, and thus to look at
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SLIPPY McGEE
me once more with unforgotten eyes. Thou knowest, my
God, before whom all hearts are bare, that I could not
have loved thee so singly nor served thee without faint-
ing, all these years, if for one faithless moment I could
have forgotten her!
My mother came out of the house with a garden hat
tied over her white hair, and big garden gloves on her
hands. At sight of the girl she uttered a joyful shriek,
flung scissors and trowel and basket aside, and rushed
forward. With catlike quickness the girl leaped to her
feet and the two met and fell into each other’s arms. I
wished when I saw the little woman’s arms close so about
the girl, and the look that flashed into her face, that
heaven had granted her a daughter.
“Mother complained that I should at least have the
decency to wire you I was coming — she said I was be-
having like a child. But I wanted to walk in unan-
nounced. I was so sure, you see, that there ’d be wel-
come and room for me at the Parish House.”
“The little room you used to like so much is waiting
for you,” said my mother, happily.
“Next to yours, all in blue and white, with the Ma-
donna of the Chair over the mantelpiece and the two
china shepherdesses under herf”
“Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest
Room, and the crippled Polish child in the small one,”
said my mother. “The baby’s name is Smelka Zura-
wawski, but she ’s all the better for it — I never saw a
nicer baby. And the little boy is so patient and so in-
telligent, and so pretty! Dr. Westmoreland thinks he
can be cured, and we hope to be able to send him on to
Johns Hopkins, after we ’ve got him in good shape.
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A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
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Where is your luggage? How long may we keep you?
But first of all you shall have tea and some of Clelie ’s
cakes. Clelie has grown horribly vain of her cakes.
She expects to make them in heaven some of these days,
for the most exclusive of the cherubim arid seraphim,
and the lordliest of the principalities and powers.”
Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant.
“I ’ve half a dozen gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs
for you, Clelie, and a perfect duck of a black frock which
you are positively to make up and wear now — you are
not to save it up to be buried in!”
“No ’m, Miss Mary Virginia. I won’t get buried in
it. 1 11 maybe get married in it,” said Clelie calmly.
“Married! Clelie ! ’ ’ said my mother, in consterna-
tion. “Do you mean to tell me you ’re planning to leave
me, at this time of our lives?”
' Clelie was indignant. “You think I have no mo’ sense
than to leave you and M’sieu Armand, for some strange
nigger? Not me!”
“Who are you going to marry, Clelie?” Mary Vir-
ginia was delighted. “And hadn’t you better let me
give you another frock? Black is hardly appropriate
for a bride.”
“I ’m not exactly set in my mind who he ’s going to
be yet, Miss Mary Virginia, but he ’s got to be somebody
or other. There ’s been lots after me, since it got out
I ’m such a grand cook and save my wages. But I ’ve
got a sort of taste for Daddy January. He ’s old, but
he ’s lively. He ’s a real ambitious old man like that.
Besides, I ’m sure of hi§ family, — I always did like Judge
Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I do like ’ristocratic
connections, Miss Mary Virginia. That big nigger that
v
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SLIPPY McGEE
drives one of the mill tracks had the impudence to tell
me he ’d give me a church wedding and pay for it him-
self, but I told him I was raised a Catholic; and what
you think he said? He said, ‘Oh, well, you ’ve been
christened in the face already. We can dip the rest of
you easy enough, and then you ’ll be a real Christian,
like me ! ’ I ’d just scalded my chickens and was picking
them, and I was that mad I upped and let him have that
dish pan full of hot water and wet feathers in his face.
‘There,’ says I, ‘you ’re christened in the face now your-
self,’ I says. ‘You can go and dip the rest of yourself,’
says I, ‘but see you do it somewhere else besides my
kitchen,’ I says. I don’t think he ’s crazy to marry me
any more, and Daddy January ’s sort of soothing to
my feelings, besides being close to hand. Yes ’m, I guess
you ’d better give me the black dress, Miss Mary Vir-
ginia, if you don’t mind: it ’d come in awful handy if
I had to go in mourning.”
“The black dress it shall be,” said Mary Virginia,
gaily. She turned to my mother. “And what do you
think, p’tite Madame? I ’ve a rare butterfly for John
Flint, that an English duke gave me for him! The
duke is a collector, too, and he ’d gotten some specimens
from John Flint. The minute he learned I was from
Appleboro he asked me all about him. He said nobody
else under the sky can ‘do’ insects so perfectly, and that
nobody except the Lord and old Henri Fabre knew as
much about certain of them as John Flint does. Folks
thought the duke was taken up with me, of course, and
I was no end conceited ! I had n’t the ghost of an idea
you and John Flint were such astonishingly learned
folks, Padre 1 But of course if a duke thought so, I
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A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
195
knew I M better think so, too — and so I did and do !
Think of a duke knowing about folks in little Apple-
boro! And he was such a nice old man, too. Not a
bit dukey, after you knew him!”
“We come in touch with collectors everywhere,” I
explained.
“And so John Flint has written some sort of a book,
describing the whole life history of something or other,
and you’ve done all the drawings! Isn’t it lovely?
Why, it sounds like something out of a pleasant book.
Mayn’t I see collector and collection in the morning?
And oh, where ’s Kerry?”
“Kerry,” said my mother gravely, “is a most im-
portant personage. He ’s John Flint’s bodyguard. He
doesn’t actually sleep in his master’s bed, because he
has one of his awn right next it. Clelie was horrified at
first. She said they ’d be eating together next, but the
Butterfly Man reminded her that Kerry likes dog-biscuit
and he doesn’t. I figure that in the order of his affec-
tions the Butterfly Man ranks Kerry first, Armand and’
myself next, and Laurence a close third.”
“Oh, Laurence,” said Mary Virginia. “I ’ll be so
glad to see Laurence again, if only to quarrel with him.
Is he just as logical as ever? Has he given the sun a
black eye with his sling-shot? My father ’s always
praising Laurence in his letters.”
Now my mother adores Laurence. She patterns upon
this model every young man she meets, and if they are
not Laurence-sized she does not include them in her good
graces. But she seldom lifts her voice in praise of her
favorite. She is far, far too wise.
“Laurence generally looks in upon us during the eve-
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SLIPPY McGEE
ning, if he is not too busy,” she said, non-committally.
“You see, people are beginning to find out what a really
fine lawyer Laurence is, so cases are coming to him
' steadily.”
The trunks had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed
into white, in which she glowed and sparkled like
a fire opaL We three dined together, and as she
became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into
her rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and dark-
ened. She was vividly alive. One could see why Mary
Virginia was classed as a great beauty, although, strictly
speaking, she was no such thing. But she had that com-
pelling charm which one simply cannot express in words.
It was there, and you felt it. She did not take your
heart by storm, willynilly. You watched her, and pres-
ently you gave her your heart willingly, delighted that
a creature so lovely and so unaffected and worth loving
had crossed your path.
She chatted with my mother about that world which
the older woman had once graced, and my mother
listened without a shade to darken her smooth forehead.
But I do not think I ever so keenly appreciated the
many sacrifices she had made for me, until that
night.
The autumn evening had grown chilly, and we had
a fire in the clean-swept fireplace. The old brass dogs
sparkled in the blaze, and the shadows flickered and
danced on the walls, and across the faces of De Bance
portraits ; the pleasant room was full of a ruddy, friendly
glow. My mother sat in her low rocker, making some-
thing or other out of pink and white wools for the baby
upstairs. Mary Virginia, at the old square piano, sang
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A LITTLE GIRL GllOWN UP , 19T
for us. She had a charming voice, carefully cultivated
and sweet, and she played with great feeling.
Kerry barked at the gate, as he always does when home
is reached. My mother, dropping her work, ran to the
window which gives upon the garden, and called. A
moment later the Butterfly Man, with Laurence just
back of him, and Kerry squeezing in between them, stood
in the door. Mary Virginia, lips parted, eyes alight,
hands outstretched, arose. The light of the whole room
seemed not so much to gather upon her, as to radiate
from her.
The dog reached her first. Outdoor exercise, careful
diet, perfect, grooming, had kept Kerry in fine shape.
His age told only in an added dignity, a slower move-
ment.
The girl went down on her knees, and hugged him.
Pitache, aroused by Kerry’s unwonted demonstrations,
circled about them, rushing in every now and then to
bestow an indiscriminate lick.
“Why, it ’s Mary Virginia !” exclaimed Laurence, and
helped her to her feet. The two regarded each other,
mutually appraising. He towered above her, head and
shoulders, and I thought with great satisfaction that, go
where she would, she could nowhere find a likelier man
than this same Laurence of ours. Like David in his
' youth, he was ruddy and of a beautiful countenance.
“Why, Laurence! What a Jack-the-Giant-killer !
Mercy, how big the boy ’s grown!”
“Why, Mary Virginia! What a heart-smasher!
Mercy, how pretty the girl ’s grown!” he came back,
holding her hand and looking down at her with equally
frank delight. “When I remember the pigtailed, leggy,
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SLIPPY McGEE
tonguey minx that used to fetch me clumps over the head
— and then regard this beatific vision — I ’m afraid I ’ll
wake up and you ’ll be gone !”
“If you ’ll kindly give me back my hand, I might be
induced to fetch you another clump or two, just to prove
my reality,” she suggested, with a delightful hint of the
old truculence.
“ ’T is she ! This is indeed none other than our long-
lost child!” burbled Laurence. “Lordy, I wish I could
tell her how more than good it is to see her again — and
to see her as she is!”
Now all this time John Flint had stood in the door-
way; and when my mother beckoned him forward, he
came, I fancied, a bit unwillingly. His limp was for
once painfully apparent, and whether from the day-
long tramp, or from some slight indisposition, he was
very pale ; it showed under his deep tan.
But I was proud of him. 5is manner had a pleasant
shyness, which was a tribute to the young girl’s beauty.
It had as well a simple dignity. And one was impressed
by the fine and powerful physique of him, so lean and
springy, so boyishly slim about the hips and waist, so
deeply stamped with clean living of days in the open,
of nights under the stars. The features had thinned and
sharpened, and his red beard became him ; the hair thin-
ning on the temples increased the breadth of the fore-
head, and behind his glasses the piercing blue eyes —
something like an eagle’s eyes — were clear, direct, and
kind. He wore his clothes well, with a sort of careless
carefulness, more like an Englishman than an American,
who is always welldressed, but rather gives the impres-
sion of being conscious of it.
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A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
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Mary Virginia’s lips parted, her eyes widened, for a
fraction of a second. But if, remembering him as she
had first seen and known him, she was astonished to find
him as he was now, she gave no farther outward sign.
Instead, she gave him her hand as to an equal, and in
a few gracious words let him know that she knew and
was proud of what he had done and what he was yet
to do. She repeated, too, with a pretty air of personal
triumph, the old nobleman’s praise. Indeed, it had been
he who had told her of the book, which he had lately
purchased and studied, she said. And oh, hadn’t she
just swelled with pride! She had been that conceited!
“You don’t know how much obliged to you I should
be, for if he hadn’t accidentally learned I was from
Appleboro, the town in which dwelt his most greatly
prized correspondent — that ’s what he said, Mr. Flint !
— why, I ’m sure he wouldn’t have noticed'me any more
than he noticed any other girl — which is, not at all ; he
being a toplofty and serious Personage addicted to peo-
ple who do things and write things, particularly things
about things that crawl and fly. And if he hadn’t
noticed me so pointedly — he actually came to see us! —
why, I shouldn’t have had such a perfectly gorgeous
time. It was a great feather in my cap,’’ she crowed.
“Everybody envied me desperately!’’ She managed to
make us understand that this was really a compliment to
the Butterfly Man, not to herself.
“If the little book served you for one minute it was
well worth the four years it took me to gather the ma-
terials together and write it,” said he, pleasantly. And
even the courtly Hunter couldn’t have said it with a
manlier grace.
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SLIPPY McGEE
too
“Mary Virginia,” said Laurence slyly, “when you ve
had your fill of bugs, tnake him show you the Book of
Obituaries. He thereby stands revealed in his true col-
ors. Why, he made me buy the old Clarion and hire
Jim Dabney to run it, so his supply of mortuary gems
shouldn’t be cut off untimely. To-day he culled this
one:
Phileol* dear, we cry because thou hast gone and left ns.
But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us.
We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save.
But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in your
grave!
He ’s got it in his pocket now. Dabney calls him Mister
Bones,” grinned Laurence.
My mother looked profoundly uncomfortable. The
Butterfly Man reddened guiltily under her reproachful
glance, but Mary Virginia giggled irrepressibly.
“I choose the Book of Obituaries first!” said she
promptly, with dancing eyes. Flint drew a breath of
relief.
He sat by silently enough, while Laurence and Madame
and Mary Virginia talked of everything under heaven.
His whole manner was that of an amused, tolerant, sym-
pathetic listener — a manner which spurs conversation to
its happiest and best. Not for nothing had Major Cart-
wright called him the most discriminatin’ listener in
Carolina.
“Oh, by the way, Flint! Hunter came by this morn-
ing to see Dabney. He is going to give a series of Plain
Talks to Workingmen this winter, and of course he
wants the Clarion to cover them. What do you think,
Padre!”
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A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP 801
“I think they will be eminently sensible talks and well
worth listening to,” said I promptly.
The Butterfly Man smiled crookedly, and shot me a
freighted glance.
“Of course,” said Laurence, easily. “"Where ’s your
father these days, Mary Virginia?”
“He was at the plantation this morning, but he ’ll be
here to-morrow, because I wired him to come. I ’ve just
got to have him for awhile, business or no business.”
“You did me a favor, then. I want to see him, too.”
“Anything very particular?”
“Politics.”
“How silly! You know very well he never meddles
with politics, thank goodness! He thinks he has some-
thing better to do.”
“That ’s just what I want to see him about,” said
Laurence.
“You mentioned a — a Mr. Hunter.” Mary Virginia
spoke after a short pause. “This is the first time I ’ve
heard of any Mr. Hunter in Appleboro. Who is Mr.
Hunter?”
' “Inglesby’s right-bower, and the king-card of the
pack,” said Laurence promptly.
“One of them which set up golden images in high
places and make all Israel for to sin,” said my mother.
“ That ’« what Howard Hunter is!”
“Oh, . . . Howard Hunter!” said she. “What sort
of a person may he be? And what is he doing here in
Appleboro?”
We told her according to our lights. Only the Butter-
fly Man sat silent and imperturbable.
“And you ’ll meet him everywhere,” finished my
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SLIPPY McGEE
*02
mother. “He ’s everything a man should be to the
naked eye, and I sincerely hope,” she added piously,
“that you won’t like him at alL”
Mary Virginia leaned hack in her chair, and glanced
thoughtfully down at the slim ringless hands clasped in
her white lap.
“No,” said she, as if to herself. “There couldn’t
by any chance be two such men in this one world. That
is he, himself.” And she lifted her head, and glanced
at my mother, with a level and proud look. “I think I
have met this Mr. Hunter,” said she, smiling curiously.
“And if that is true, your hope is realized, p’tite Ma-
dame. .1 shan’t.”
I
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CHAPTER XH
\
JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN
A LMOST up to Christmas the weather had been
so mild and warm that folks lived out of doors.
Girls clothed like the angels in white raiment
fluttered about and blessed the old streets with their
fresh and rosy faces. In the bright sunshine the flowers
seemed to have lost all thought of winter; they forgot
to fade; and roses rioted in every garden as if it were
still summer. Nobody but the Butterfly Man grumbled
at this springlike balminess, and he only because he was
impatient to resume experiments carried over from year
to year — the effect of varying degrees of natural cold
upon the colors of butterflies whose chrysalids were ex-
posed to it. He generally used the chrysalids of the
Papilio Turnus, whose females are dimorphic, that is,
having two distinct forms. He did not care to resort to
artificial freezing, preferring to allow Nature herself to
work for him. And the jade repaid him, as usual, by
showing him what she could do but refusing to divulge
the moving why she did it. She gave him for his pains
sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark butterfly, with
different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid mark-
ings, from chrysalids subjected to exactly the same
amount of exposure.
The Butterfly Man was burning to complete his notes,
SOS
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SLIPPY McGEE
already assuming the proportions of that very exact and
valuable book they were afterward to become. He
chafed at the enforced delay, and wished himself at the
North Pole.
In the meantime, having nothing else on hand just
then, it occurred to him to put some of these notes, cover-
ing the most interesting and curious of the experiments,
into papers which the general run of folks might like to
read. Dabney had been after him for some time to do
some such work as this for the Clarion.
I think Flint himself was genuinely surprised when
he read over those enchanting papers, though he did not
then and never has learned to appreciate their unique
charm and value. Instead, however, of sending them to
Dabney, he thought they might possibly interest a some-
what wider public, and with great diffidence, and some
misgivings, he sent one or two of them to certain of the
better known magazines. They did not come back. He
received checks instead, and a request for more.
Now the book and the several monographs he had
already gotten out had been, although very interesting,
strictly scientific; they could appeal only to students
and scholars. But these papers were entirely different.
Scientific enough, very clear and lucid and most
quaintly flavored with what Laurence called Flintish-
ness, they were so well received, and the response
of the reading public to this fresh and new presentment
of an ever-fascinating subject was so immediate and so
hearty, that the Butterfly Man found himself unexpect-
edly confronting a demand he was hard put to it to
supply.
He was very much more modect about this achieve-
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN
205
ment than we were. My mother’s pride was delicious to
witness. You see, it also invested me with a very far-
sighted wisdom ! Here was it proven to all that Father
De Ranee had been right in holding fast to the man who
had come to him in such sorry plight.
I suppose it was this which moved Madame to take
the step she had long been contemplating. Knowing her
Butterfly Man, she began with infinite wile.
“Armand,” said she, one bright morning in early
November, “I am going to entertain, too — everybody
else has done so, and now it ’s my turn. The weather
is so ideal, and my garden so gorgeous with all those
chrysanthemums and salvias and geraniums and roses,
that it would be sinful not to take advantage of such
conditions.
“I have saved enough out of my house-money to meet
the expenses — and I am not going to be charitable and
do my Christian duty with that money! I ’m going to
entertain. I really owe that much attention to Mary
Virginia.” She laid her hand on my arm. ‘‘I must see
John Flint; go over to his rooms, and bring him back
with you.”
I thought she merely needed his help and counsel, for
she is always consulting him ; she considers that whatever
barque is steered by John Flint must needs come home
to harbor. He obeyed her summons with alacrity, for
it delights him to assist Madame. He did not know
what fate overshadowed him!
My mother sat in her low rocker, a lace apron lending
piquancy to her appearance. She looked unusually
pretty — there wasn’t a girl in Appleboro who didn’t
envy Madame De Ranee’s complexion.
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*06 SLIPPY McGEE
“Well,” said the Butterfly Man cheerfully, uncon-
sciously falling under the spell of this feminine charm,
“the fadre tells me there ’s a party in the wind.
Good! Now what am I to do ? How am I to help you
out?”
My mother leaned forward and compelled him to meet
direct her eyes that were friendly and clear and candid
as a child’s.
“Mr. Flint,” said she artlessly, ignoring his questions,
“Mr. Flint, you ’ve been with Armand and me quite a
long time now, have you not?”
“A couple of lifetimes,” said he, wonderingly.
“A couple of lifetimes,” she mused, still holding his
eyes, “is a fairly long time. Long enough, at least, to
know and to be known, should n’t you think?”
He awaited enlightenment. He never asks unneces-
sary questions.
“I am going,” said my mother, with apparent
irrelevance, “to entertain in honor of Mary Virginia
Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro here. I
sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be
present, too.”
The Butterfly Man almost fell out of his chair.
“Me?” he gasped.
“You,” with deadly softness. “You.”
Horror and anguish encompassed him. Perspiration
appeared on his forehead, and he gripped the arms of
his chair as one bracing himself for torture. He looked
at the little lady with the terror of one to whom the den-
tist has just said: “That jaw tooth must come out at
once. Open your mouth wider, please, so I can get a
grip!”
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 207
My mother regarded this painful emotion heartlesdy
enough. She said coolly:
“You don’t need to look as if I were sentencing you
to be hanged before sundown. I am merely inviting you
to be present at a very pleasant affair.” But the Butter-
fly Man, with his mouth open, wagged his head feebly.
“And this,” said my mother, turning the screw again,
“is but the beginning. After this, I shall manage it so
that all invitations to the Parish House include Mr. John
Flint. There is no reason under heaven why you should
occupy what one might call an ambiguous position. I
am determined, too, that you shall no longer rushNaway
to the woods like a scared savage, the minute more than
one or two ladies appear. No, nor have Armand hurry-
ing away as quickly as he can, either, to bury or to marry
somebody. All feminine Appleboro shall be here at
once, and you two shall be here at the same time !
“John Flint, regard me: if the finest butterfly that
ever crawled a caterpillar on this earth has the imperti-
nence to fly by my garden the afternoon I ’m entertain-
ing for Mary Virginia, it can fly, but you shan’t.
“Armand: nobody respects Holy Orders more than I
do: but there isn’t anybody alive going to get bom or*
baptized or married or buried, or anything else, in this
parish, on that one afternoon. If they are selfish enough
to do it anyhow, why, they can do it without your as-
sistance. You are going to stay home with me : both of
you.”
“My dear mother — ”
“Good Lord! Madame — ”
“I am not to be dearmothered nor goodlorded!
Heaven knows I ask little enough of either of you. I
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SLIPPY McGEE
am at your beck and call, every day in the year. It
does seem to me that when I wish to be civilized, and
return for once some of the attentions I have received
from my friends, I might at least depend upon yon two
for one little afternoon !” Could anything be more art-
fully unanswerable?
“Oh, but Madame — ” began Flint, horrified by such
an insinuation as his unwillingness to do anything at
any time for this adored lady.
“Particularly,” continued my mother, inexorably,
“when I have your best interest at heart, too, John Flint!
Monsieur the Butterfly Man, you will please to remember
that you are a member of my household. You are almost
like a son to me. You are the apple of that foolish
Armand’s eye — do not look so astounded, it is true!
Also, you will have a great name some of these days.
So far, so good. But — you are making the grievous
error of shunning society, particularly the society of
women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it
evolves the ‘crank,’ it spoils many an otherwise very
nice man.”
Flint sagged in his chair, and clasped and unclasped
his hands, which trembled visibly. Madame regarded
him without pity, with even a touch of scorn.
“Yes, it is indeed high time to reclaim you!” she
decided, with the fearsome zeal of the female reformer
of a man. “You silly man, you! Have you no proper
pride? Have you absolutely no idea of your own worth?
Well, then, if you have n’t, I have. You shall take your
place and play your part !”
“But,” said Flint, and a gleam of hope irradiated his
stricken face, “but I don’t think I ’ve got the clothes to
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 209
wear to parties. And I really can’t afford to spend any
more money right now, either. I spent a lot on that old
1797 Abbot & Smith’s ‘Natural History of the Barer
Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia.’ It cost like the
dickens, although I really got it for about half what it ’s
worth. I had to take it when I got the chance, and I ’d
be willing to wear gunny-sacking for a year to pay for
those plates ! I need them : I want them. But I don’t
r »ed a party. I don’t want a party! Madame, don’t,
don’t make me go to any party!”
“Nonsense!” said my mother. “Clothes, indeed! I
shouldn’t worry about clothes, if I were you, John
Flint. You came into this world knowing exactly what
to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air!
That is a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not
always vouchsafed to the deserving, either.”
“I have a cage full of grubs — most awfully particular
grubs, and they ’ve got to be watched like a sick kid
with the — with the whatever it ^s sick kids have, any-
how. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one whole
afternoon — ”
“You just let me see a single solitary grub have the
temerity to hatch himself out that one afternoon, that ’s
all ! They have all the rest of their nasty little lives to
hatch out!”
“Besides, there ’s a boy lives about five miles from
here, and he ’s likely to bring me word any minute about
something I simply have to have — ”
“I want to see that boy!” She pointed her small
forefinger at him, with the effect of a pistol leveled at
his head.
“You are coming to my affair!” said she, sternly.
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SLIPPY McGEE
“If yon have no regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia
and me, yon shall have some for yourself; if you have
none for yourself, then you shall have some for usl”
This took the last puff of wind from the Butterfly
Man’s sails.
“All right!” he gulped, and committed himself
irremediably. “I — I ’ll be right here. You say so, and
of course I ’ve got to!”
“Of course you will,” said my mother, smiling at him
charmingly. “I knew I had only to present the matter
in its proper light, and you ’d see it at once. You are
so sensible, John Flint. It ’s such a comfort, when the
gentlemen of one’s household are so amenable to reason,
and so ready to stand by one !”
Having said her say, and gotten her way — as she was
perfectly sure she would — Madame left the gentlemen of
her household to their own reflections and devices.
“Parson!” The Butterfly Man seemed to come out
of a trance. “Remember the day you made me let a
caterpillar crawl up my hand!”
“Yes, my son.”
“Parson, there ’s a horrible big teaparty crawling up
my pants’ leg this minute!”
“Just keep still,” I couldn’t help laughing at him,
“and it will eome down after awhile without biting you.
Remember, you got used to the others in no time.”
“Some of ’em stung like the very devil,” he reminded
me, darkly.
“Oh, but those were the hairy fellows. This is a
stingless, hairless, afternoon party! It won’t hurt you
at all!”
“It ’s walking up my pants’ leg, just the same. And
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN *11
V
I ’m scared of it: I ’m horrible scared of it! My God!
Mel At a jane-junket ! ... all the thin ones diked out
with doodads where the bones come through '. . . stoking
like sailors on shore leave ... all the fat ones grouchy
about their shapes and thinking it ’s their souls. . . .”
And he broke out, in a fluttering falsetto :
“ * Oh, Mr. Flint, do please let us see your lovely butter-
flies! Aren't they just too perfectly sweet for any-
thing! I wonder why they don’t trim hats with butter-
flies t Do you know all their names, you awfully clever
manf Do they know their names, too, Mr. Flints
Butterflies must be so very interesting! And so dec-
orative, particularly on china and house linen! How
you have the heart to kill them, I can’t imagine. Just
think of taking the poor mother-butterflies away from
the dear little baby-ones!’ . . . — and me having to stand
there and behave like a perfect gentleman !” He looked
at me, scowling : N
“Now, you look here: I can stan<j ’em single-file, but
if I ’m made to face ’em in squads, why, you blame no-
body but yourself if I foam at the mouth and chase
myself in a circle and snap at legs, you hear met”
“I hear you,” said I, coldly. “You didn’t get your
orders from me. I think your proper place is in the
woods. You go tell Madame what you ’ve just told me
— or should you like me to warn her that you ’re subject
to rabies?” 1
“For „ the love of Mike, parson! Have a heart!
Haven’t I got troubles enough?” he asked bitterly.
“You are behaving more like an unspanked brat than
% grown man.”
“I wasn’t weaned on teapartiee,” said he, sulkily,
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SLIPPY McQEE
* 1 *
“and it oughtn’t to be expected I can swallow ’em at
sight without making a face and — ”
“'Whining,’’ I finished for him. And I added, with
a reminiscent air : “Rulel: Can the Squeal 1”
He glared at me, but as I met the glare unruffled,
his lip presently twisted into a grin of desperate humor.
His shoulders squared.
“All right,” said he, resignedly. And after an in-
terval of dejected silence, he remarked: “I ’ve sort of
got a glimmer of how Madame feels about this. She
generally knows what ’s what, Madame does, and I
have n’t seen her make a mistake yet. If she thinks it ’s
my turn to come on in and take a hand in any game
she ’s playing, why, I guess I ’d better play up to her
lead the best I know how . . . and trust God to slip me
over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she
can depend on me not to fall down on her . . . and Miss
Eustis.”
“No need to tell Madame what she already knows.”
“Huh!” With his chin in his hand and his head
bent, he stared out over the autumn garden with eyes
which did not see its flaming flowers. Of a sudden his
shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud. -
“What are you laughing att” I was startled out of
a revery of my own.
“Everything,” said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and
stood up and shook himself. “And everybody. And
me in particular. Me! Oh, good Lord, think of Me!”
He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I watched
him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne’s fa-
miliar greeting; and Major 'Cartwright stop him, and
with his hand on the Butterfly Man’s arm, walk off with
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 218
him. Major Cartwright had kefct George Inglesby out
of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was stiff as
the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that
gentleman’s impeccable connections; he met John Flint,
not as through a glass darkly, but face to face.
My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished
manuscript cookbook in her hand, looked after them
thoughtfully :
“Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper
place!”
“And does he not?”
.“Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man’s way, though
— not a woman’s. It ’s the woman’s way that really
matters, you see. , When women acknowledge that man
socially — and I mean it to happen — his light won’t be
hidden under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his
candlestick and shine.”
That sense of bewilderment which at times over-
whelmed me when the case of John Flint pressed hard,
overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As he him-
self had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Some-
thing too big to withstand. I was afraid to do any-
thing, to say anything, for or against, this launching of
his barque upon the social sea. I felt that the affair had
been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving
now was but to stand and wait.
And in the meanwhile my mother, with her own hands,
washed and darned the priceless old lace that was her
ehiefest pride; had something done to a frock; got out
her sacredest treasures of linen and china and silver;
requisitioned the Mayne and the Dexter spoons as well ;
had the Parish House scoured until it glittered; did
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SLIPPY McGEE
everything to the garden but wash and iron it; spent
momentous and odorous hours with C161ie over the mak-
ing of toothsome delights; and on a golden afternoon
gave a tea on the flower-decked verandahs and in the
glorious garden, to which all Appleboro, i)4 its best bib
and tucker, came as one. And there, in the heart and
center of it, cool, calm, correct, collected, hiding whatever
mortal qualms he might have felt under a demeanor as
perfect as Hunter’s own, apparently at home and at
ease, behold the Butterfly Man!
Everybody seemed to know him. Everybody had
something pleasant to say to him. Folks simply ac-
cepted him at sight as one of themselves. And the
Butterfly Man accepted them quite as simply, with no
faintest trace of embarrassment.
If Appleboro had cherished the legend that this was
a prodigal well on his way home, that afternoon settled
it for them into a positive fact. His manner was perfect.
It was as if one saw the fine and beautiful grain of a
piece of rare wood come out as the varnish that disfigured
it was removed. Here was no veneer to scratch and
erack at a touch, but the solid, rare thing itself. My
mother had been right, as always. John Flint stepped
into his proper place. Appleboro was acknowledging it
officially.
The garden was full of laughter and chatter and per-
fumes, and women in pretty clothes, and young girls
dainty as flowers, and the smiling faces of men. But I
am no longer of the party age. I stole away to a favorite
haunt of mine at the back of the garden, behind the
gpireas and the holly tree, where there is a dilapidated
old seat we have been threatening to remove any time this.
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN *15
five years. Here, some time later, the Butterfly Mart
himself came stealthily, and seemed embarrassed to find;
the place preempted.
‘‘Well,” said I, making room for him beside me, ‘‘it
isn’t so bad after all, is it?”
‘‘No. I ’m glad I was let in for it,” he admitted
frankly, ‘‘though I ’d hate to have to come to parties;
for a living. Still, this afternoon has nailed down d
thought that ’s been buzzing around loose in my mind
this long time. It ’s this: people aren’t anything but
people, after all. Men and women and kids, the best and
the worst of ’em, they ’re nothing but people, the samfe
as everybody else. No, I ’ll never be scared to meet any-
body, after this. I ’m people, too!”
‘‘The same as everybody else.”
‘‘The same as everybody else,” he repeated, soberly*
“Not but what there ’s lots of difference between folks.
And there are things it ’s good to know, too . . . thinga
that women like Madame . . . and Miss Mary Virginia
Eustis . . . expect a man to know, if they ’re not going
to be ashamed of him.” He thought about this awhile,
then:
“I tell you what, father,” he remarked, tentatively,
“it must be a mighty fine thing to know you ’ve got the
right address written on you, good and plain, and the.
right number of stamps, and the sender’s name some-
where on a corner, to keep you from going astray or to
the Dead Letter Office ; and not to be scrawled in lead-
pencil, and misspelt, and finger-smutched, and with a!
couple of postage-due stamps stuck on you crooked, and
the Lord only knows who and where from.”
“Why, yes,” said I, “that ’s true, and one does well
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SLIPPY McGEE
to consider it. Bnt the main thing, the really important
thing, is the letter itself— what ’s written inside, John
Flint.”
“Bnt what ’s written inside wonld n’t be any the worse
if it was written clearer and better, and the outside was
cleaner and on nice paper? And in pen-and-ink, not
lead-pencil scratches?” he insisted earnestly.
“Of course not.”
“That ’s what I ’ve been thinking lately, father.
Somehow, I always did like things to have some class to
’em. I remember how I used to lean against the restau-
rant windows when I was a kid, and watch the folks
inside, how they dressed and acted, and the way the
nicest of ’em handled table-tools. They weren’t swells,
of course, and plenty of 'em made plenty of mistakes —
I ’ve seen stunts done with a common table-knife that
had the best of the sword-swallowing gents skinned a
mile — but I wasn’t a fool, and I learned some. Then
when I — er — began to make real money (parson, I made
it in wads and gobs and lumps those days!) why, I got
me the real thing in glad rags from the real thing in
tailors, and I used to blow a queen that ’d been a swell
herself once, to the joint where the gilt-edged bunch eat
and show off their clothes and the rest of themselves.
My jane looked the part to the life, I had the kale and
the clothes and was chesty as a head-waiter, being con-
siderably stuck on yours truly along about then, so we
put it over. I had the chance to get hep to the last word
in clothes and manners; that’s what I’d gone for,
though I didn’t tell that to the skirt I was buying the
eats for. And it was good business, too, for more than
once when some precinct bonehead that pipe-dreamed
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN
he was a detective was pussy-catting some cold rat-hole,
there was me vanbibbering in the white light at the
swellest joints in little old New York! Funny, wasn’t
itt And handy] And I was learning, too — learning
things worth good money to know. I saw that the best
sort did n’t make any noise about anything. They went
about their business, whatever it was, easy-easy, same as
me in my line. But, parson, though I ’d got hep to the
outside, and had sense enough to copy what I ’d seen, I
wasn’t wise to the inside difference — the things that
make the best what it is, I mean — because I ’d never been
close enough to find out that there ’s more to it than
looks and duds and manners. It took the Parish House
people to soak that into me. People are n’t anything but
people — but the best are — well, different.”
We fell silent; a happy silence, into which, as
from another planet, there drifted light laughter, and
sweet gay voices of girls, and the stir and rustle of many
people moving about. On the Mayne fence the judge’s,
black Panch sat, neck outstretched, emerald eyes aslant,
ears cocked uneasily at these unwonted noises. At a
little distance a bluejay watched him with bright malevo-
lent eyes, every now and then screaming insults at the
whole tribe of cats, and black Panch in particular.
Flint snapped his fingers, and Panch, with a spring,
was off the fence and on his friend’s knees. It seemed
to me it had only needed the sleek beastie to make
that hour perfect ; — for cats in the highest degree make
for a sense of homely, friendly intimacy. Flint, feeling
this, stroked the black head contentedly. Panch purred
for the three of us.
Jhto this presently broke Miss Sally Ruth Dexter, and
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SLIPPY McGEE
bore down on John Flint like a frigate with all sails
spread. At sight of her Panch spat and fled, and took
the happy spell with him.
“Here yon are, cuddling that old pirate of a black
cat!” said she, briskly. “I told Madame you’d be
mooning about somewhere. Here ’s some cocoanut cake
for you both. Father, Madame ’s been looking for you.
Did you know,” she sank her voice to a piercing whisper,
“that George Inglesby ’s here? Well, he is! He’s
talking to Mary Virginia Eustis, this very minute!
They do say he ’s running after Mary Virginia, and I ’m
sure I would n’t be surprised, for if ever a mortal man
had the effrontery of Satan that man ’s George Ingles-
by! I must admit he ’s improved since Mr. Hunter
took him in hand. He ’s not nearly so stout and red-
faced, and he hasn’t half the jowl, though Lord knows
he ’ll have to get rid of a few tons more of his blubber”
(Miss Sally Ruth has a free and fetterless tongue) “if
he wants to look human. As I say, what ’s the use
of being a millionaire if you ’ve got a shape like a rain-
barrel f I often tell myself, ‘Maybe you haven’t been
given such a lot of this world’s goods as some, Sally
Ruth Dexter, but you can thank your sweet Redeemer
you ’ve at least got a Figure !”
The Butterfly Man cast a speculative eye over her
generous proportions.
“Yes ’m, you certainly have a whole lot to be thank-
ful for,” he agreed, so wholeheartedly that Miss Sally
Ruth laughed.
“Get along with you, you impudent fellow!” said she,
in high good humor. “Go and look at that old scamp
of an Inglesby making eyes at a girl young enough to
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 219
be his daughter ! I heard this morning that Mr. Hunter
has orders to get him, by hook or crook, an invitation to
anything Mary Virginia goes to. I declare, it ’s scan*
dalous! Come to think of it, though, I never saw any
man yet, no matter how old or ugly or outrageous he
might be, who did n’t really believe he stood a perfectly
good chance to win the affections of the handsomest
young woman alive! If you ask me, I think George
Inglesby had better join the church and get himself ready
to meet his God, instead of gallivanting around girls.
If he feels he has to gallivant, why don’t he pick out
somebody nearer his own age?”
“Why should you make him choose mutton when he
wants lamb?” asked the Butterfly Man, unexpectedly.
“Becaus^ he ’s an old bellwether, that ’s why!”
snapped Miss Sally Ruth, scandalized. “I wonder at
Annabelle Eustis allowing him to come near Mary Vir-
ginia, millionaire or no millionaire. I bet you James
Eustis will have something to say, if Mary Virginia her-
self doesn’t!” And she sailed off again, leaving us, as
the saying is, with a bug in the ear.
“Now what in the name of heaven,” I wondered, “can
Miss Sally Ruth meant Mary Virginia . . ..Inglesby.
. . . The thing ’s sacrilegious.”
The Butterfly Man rose abruptly. “Suppose we stroll
about a bit?” he suggested.
“I thought,” said my mother, when we approached
her, “that you had disobeyed orders, and run away!”
“We were afraid to,” said John Flint. “We knew
you ’d make us go to bed without supper.”
“Did you know,” said my mother, hurriedly, for
Clelie was making signs to her, “that George Inglesby is
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SLIPPY McGEE
heref The invitation was merely perfunctory, just sent
along with Mr. Hunter’s. I never dreamed the man
would accept it. You can’t imagine how astonished I
was when he presented himself!”
A few moments later, the Butterfly Man said in a low
voice: “Look yonder!” And turning, I saw Hunter.
He was for the moment alone, and stood with his head
bent slightly forward, his bright cold glance intent upon
the two persons approaching — Mary Virginia and George
Inglesby. His white teeth showed in a smile. I remem-
bered, disagreeably, Flint’s “I don’t like the expression
of his teeth: he looks like he ’d bite.”
Until that afternoon I had not seen the secretary for
some time, for he had been kept unusually busy. Those
eminently sensible talks to the mill workers had been
well received, and were to be followed by others along
the same line. He had done even more : he had induced
the owners to recognize the men’s Union, and all future
complaints and demands were to be submitted to arbi-
tration. Inglesby had undoubtedly gained ground enor-
mously by that move. Hunter had done well. And yet
— catching that sharp-toothed smile, I felt my faith in
him for the first time shaken by one of those unaccount-
able uprushes of intuition which perplex and disturb.
I knew, too, that Laurence had had several long and
serious conferences with Eustis, and I could well imagine
the arguments he had brought to bear, the rousing of a
sense of duty, and of state pride.
Eustis was obstinate. He had many interests. He
was a very, very busy man. He did n ’t want to be a Sen-
ator; he wanted to be let alone to attend to his own
business in his own way. But, insisted Laurence, when
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 821
a thing must be done, and yon can do it in a manner
which benefits all and injures none; when your own
people ask you to do it for them, isn’t that your
business? <
A cold damning resumS of Inglesby’s entire career
made Eustis hesitate. A vivid picture of what the state
might expect at Inglesby’s hands roused him to just
anger. Such as this fellow represent Carolina? Never 1
When Inglesby’s name should be put up, Eustis unwill-
ingly agreed to oppose him.
And here was Inglesby, in my garden, making himself
agreeable to Eustis’s daughter 1 He was so plainly de-
sirous to please her, that it troubled me, although it made
his secretary smile.
The Mary Virginia walking beside Inglesby was not
the Mary Virginia we knew: this was the regal one, the
great beauty. Her whole maimer was subtly charged
with a sort of arrogant hauteur; her fairness itself
changed, tinged with pride as with an inward fire, until
she glowed with a cold, jewel-like brightness, hard and
clear. Her very skirts rustled pridefully. Her glance
at the man beside her was insulting in its disdainful
indifference.
What Would have saddened a nobler spirit enchanted
Inglesby. He was dazzled by her. Her interest in what^
he was saying was coolly impersonal, the fixed habit of
trained politeness. He could even surmise that she was
mentally yawning behind her hand. When she looked at
him her eyes under her level brows held a certain scorn-
fulness. And this, too, delighted him. He groveled to
it. His red face glowed with pleasure ; he swelled with
a pride very different from Mary Virginia’s. I thought
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SLIPPY McGEE
222
he had an upholstered look in his glossy clothes, remind*
ing me unpleasantly of horsehair furniture.
“He looks like a day coach in July,” growled the But*
terfly Man in my ear, disgustedly.
Inglesby at this moment perceived Hunter and beamed
upon him, as well he might! Who but this priceless
secretary had pulled the strings which set him beside
this glorious creature, in the Parish House garden? He
turned to the girl, with heavy jauntiness :
“My good right hand, Miss Eustis, I assure you!” he
beamed. “But I am sure you two need no dissertations
upon each other’s merits!”
“None whatever,” said Miss Eustis, and looked over
Mr. Hunter’s head.
“Oh, Miss Eustis and I are really old acquaintances!”
smiled the secretary. “We know each other very well
indeed.”
Mary Virginia made no reply. Instead, she looked
about her, indifferently enough, until her glance en-
countered the Butterfly Man’s. What he saw in her’s
I do not know. But he instantly moved toward her, and
swept me with him!
“Father De Ranc6 and I,” said he, easily, “haven’t
had chance to speak to you all afternoon, Miss Eustis.”
He acknowledged Hunter’s friendly greeting pleasantly
enough.
“And I ’ve been looking for you both.” The hauteur
faded from the young face. Our own Mary Virginia
appeared, changed in the twinkling of an eye.
Inglesby favored me with condescending effusiveness.
Flint got off with a smirking stare.
“And this,“ said Inglesby in the sort of voice some
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 228
people use in addressing strange children to whom they
desire to be patronizingly nice and don’t know how,
“this is the Butterfly Man !’’ Out came the jovial smile
in its full deadliness. The Butterfly Man’s lips drew
back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet
points behind his glasses. “I have heard of you from
Mr. Hunter. And so you collect butterflies! Very in-
teresting and active occupation for any one that — ahem !
likes that sort of thing. Very.”
“He collects obituaries, too,” said Hunter, immensely
amused. “You mustn’t overlook the obituaries, Mr.
Inglesby.”
Mr. Inglesby favored the collector of butterflies and
obituaries with another speculative, piglike stare. You
could see the thought behind it: “Trifling sort of fel-
low! Idiotic! Very.” Aloud he merely mumbled :
“Singular taste. Very. Collecting obituaries, eh?”
% “Fascinating things to collect. Very,” said the But-
terfly Man, sweetly. “Not to be laughed at. I might
add yours to ’em, too, you know, some of these fine
days!” '
“Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!” murmured Hunt-
er. Mr. Inglesby, however, was visibly ruffled and
annoyed. Who was this fellow braying of obituaries as
if he, Inglesby, were on the highroad to oblivion already,
when he was, in reality, still quite a young man ? And
right before Miss Eustis! He turned purple.
“My obituary?” he spluttered. “Mine? Mine?”
“Sure, if it ’s worth while,” said the Butterfly Man,
amiably. Mary Virginia barely suppressed a smile.
“Madame would like to see you, Miss Eustis,” he told
her.
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224 SLIPPY McGEE
Mary Virginia, bowing distantly to the millionaire and
his secretary, walked off with him, I following.
Once free of them, her spirits rose soaringly.
“It ’s been a lovely afternoon, and I ’ve enjoyed it
all — except Mr. Inglesby. I don’t like Mr. Inglesby,
Padre. He ’s amusing enough, I suppose, at times, but
one can’t seem to get rid of him — he ’s a perfect Old
Man of the Sea,’’ she told us, confidentially. “And yon
can’t imagine how detestably youthful he is, Mr. Flint!
He told me half a dozen times this afternoon that after
all, years don’t matter — it is the heart which is young.
And he takes cold tubs and is proud of himself, and
plays golf— for exercise!’’ The scorn of the lithe and
limber young was in her voice.
“What ’s the use of being a millionaire, if you have a
shape like the rainbarrelf ” I quoted pensively.
Later that night, when “the lights were fled, the gar-
lands dead, and all but me departed,’’ I went over for
my usual last half-hour with John Flint. Very often
we have nothing whatever to say, and we are even wise
enough not to say it. We sit silently, he with Kerry’s
noble old head against his foot, each busy with his own
thoughts and reflections, but each conscious of the
friendly nearness of the other. You have never had a
friend, if you have never known one with whom you
might sit a silent, easy hour. To-night he sucked sav-
agely at his old pipe, and his eyes were somber.
“You got the straight tip from Miss Sally Buth,
father,” he said, coming out of a brown study. “What
do you suppose that piker ’s trying to crawl out of his
cocoon fort He never wanted to caper around Apple-
boro women before, did het No. And here he ’s been
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JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN 225
muldooning to get some hog-fat off and some wind and
waistline back. Now, why? To please himself? He
don’t have to care a hoot what he looks like. To please
some girl ? That ’s more likely. Parson : that girl ’s
Mary Virginia Eustis.” He added, through his teeth:
“Hunter knows. Hunter ’s steering.” And then, with
quiet conviction: “They ’re both as crooked as hell!”
he finished.
“But the thing *s absurd on the face of it! "Why, the
mere notion is preposterous!” I insisted, angrily.
“I have seen worse things happen,” said he, shortly.
“But there, — keep your hair on! Things don’t happen
unless they ’re slated to happen, so don’t let it bother
you too much. You go turn in and forget everything
except that you need a night’s sleep.”
I tried to follow his sound advice, but although I
needed a night’s sleep and there was no tangible reason
why I shouldn’t have gotten it, I didn’t. The shadow
of Inglesby haunted my pillow.
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CHAPTER Xm
4 ‘each in his own coin”
W ITH the New Year had descended upon John
Flint an obsessing and tormenting spirit
which made him by fits and starts moody,
depressed, nervous, restless, or wholly silent and ab-
stracted. I have known him to come in just before dawn,
snatch a few hours’ sleep, and be off again before day
had well set in, though he must already have been far
afield, for Kerry heeled him with lagging legs and hang-
ing head. Or he would shut himself up, and refusing
himself to all callers, fall into a cold fury of concentrated
effort, sitting at his table hour after hour, tireless, ab-
sorbed, accomplishing a week’s overdue work in a day
and a night. Often his light burned all night through.
Some of the most notable papers bearing his name, and
research work of far-reaching significance, came from
that workroom then — as if lumps of ambergris had been
tossed out of a whirlpool.
All this time, too, he was working in conjunction with
the Washington Bureau, experimenting with remedies
for the boll-weevil, and fighting the plague of the cattle-
tick. This, and the other outside work in which he was
so immensely interested, could not be allowed to hang
fire. Like many another, he found himself for his sal-
vation caught in the great human net he himself had
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helped to spin. It was not only the country people who
held him. Gradually, as he passed to and from on his
way among them, and became acquainted with their
children, there had sprung up a most curious sort of
understanding between the Butterfly Man on the one
side, and the half-articulate foreigners in the factory and
the sly secretive mill-workers on the other.
People I had never been able to get at humanly, people
who resisted even Madame, not only chose to open their
doors but their mouths, to Meester Pleent. Uncouth
fumbling men, slip-shod women, dirty-faced children,
were never dumb and suspicious or wholly untruthful
and evasive,' where the Butterfly Man was concerned.
He was one to whom might be told, without shame, fear,
or compunction, the plain, blunt, terrible truth. He
understood.
“I wish you ’d look up Petronovich’s boy, father,” he
plight tell me, or, “Madame, have a woman-talk with Lo-
vena Smith’s girl at the mills, will you? Lovena ’s a
fool, and that girl ’s up against things.” And we went,
and wondered, afterwards, what particularly tender
guardian angels kept close company with our Butterfly
Man.
Then occurred the great event which put Meester
Fleent in a place apart in the estimation of all Apple*
boro, forever settled his status among the mill-hands and
the “hickeys,” and incidentally settled a tormenting
doubt of himself in his own mind. I mean the settling
of the score against Big Jan.
Half-Russian Jan was to the Poles what a padrone too
often is to the Italian laborers, a creature who herded
them together and mercilessly worked them for the profit
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SLIPPY McGEE
of others, and incidentally his own, an exacting tyrant
against whose will it was useless to rebel. He had a
little timid wife with red eyes — perhaps because she cried
so much over the annual baby which just as annually
died. He made a good deal of money, but the dark Slav
passion for whisky forced him to spend what he earned,
and this increased a naturally sullen temper. He was the
thorn in the Parish side; that we could do so little for
the Poles was due in a large measure to Jan’s stubborn
hindering.
His people lived in terror of him. When they dis-
pleased him he beat them. It was not a light beating, and
once or twice we had in the Guest Booms nursed its vic-
tims back into some semblance of humanity. But what
could we do? Jan was so efficient a foreman that
Inglesby’s power was always behind him. So when Jan
chose to get very drunk, and sang long, monotonous
songs, particularly when he sang through his teeth,
lugubriously:
“Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela
Poki my Zygemy . . .”
men and women trembled. Poland might not be lost,
but somebody’s skin always paid for that song.
In passing one morning — it was a holiday — through
the Poles’ quarters, an unpleasant enough stretch which
other folks religiously avoided, the Butterfly Man heard
shrieks coming from Michael Karski’s back yard. It
was Michael’s wife and children who screamed.
“It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent,” a
man volunteered. “The Boss, he is much drunk. Ear-
ski’s woman, she did not like the ways of him in her
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house, and Michael said, ‘I will to send for the police.’
So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael’s woman, she
hollers like hell.”
John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew
his broad-bosomed, patient, cowlike wife, and he liked
the brood of shockheaded youngsters who plodded along
patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and with scanty
enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the lit-
tlest girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for
the littlest boy. Perhaps that is why he turned and went
with the rest to Michael’s yard where Big Jan was knock-
ing Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting through his
teeth: “Now! Sen’ for those policemens, you!”
Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was
in an uglier mood than usual, and Michael had greatly
displeased him; therefore it was Michael’s turn to pay.
Nobody interfered, for every one was horribly afraid
Big Jan would turn upon him. Besides, was not he
the Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not
a man go, short of pay, and with his wife and children
crying? Of a verity!
The Butterfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid
his net aside. Then he pushed his way through the
scared onlookers.
“Meester Fleent! For God’s love, save my man,
Meester Flint 1” Michael’s wife Katya screamed at
him.
By way of answer Meester Fleent very deliberately
handed her his eye-glasses. Then one saw that his eyes,
slitted in his head, were cold and bright as a snake’s;
his chin thrust forward, and in his red beard his lips
made a straight line like a clean knife-cut. Two bright
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880 SLIPPY McGEE
red spots had jumped into his tanned cheeks. His lean
hands balled.
He said no word; hut the crumpled thing that was
Michael was of a sudden plucked bodily out of Big Jan’s
hands and thrust into the waiting woman’s. The aston-
ished Boss found himself confronting a pale and formid-
able face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.
Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to
his side. For the moment Flint had forgotten him. But
Big Jan’s evil eyes caught Bight of him. He knew the
Butterfly Man’s dog very well. He snickered. A huge
foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonish-
ment, and Kerry went flying through the air as if shot
from a catapult.
“So!” Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, “I feex you
like that in one meenute, me.”
The red jumped from John Flint’s cheeks to his eyes,
and stayed there. Why, this hulking brute had hurt
Kerry! His breath exhaled in a whistling sigh. He
seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap he
launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went
down. It had to.
I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not
written large in the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro,
and have I not heard it by word of mouth from many a
raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland
lick his lips over it unto this day?
A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers.
Meester Fleent was a great and a good man ; but he was
a crippled man. Death was very close to him.-
Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he
was in a most horrible rage, and this weakened him. He
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meant to kill this impudent fellow who had taken Michael
away from him before he had half-finished with him.
But first he would break every bone in the crippled man’s
body, take him in his hands and break his back over one
knee as one does a slat. A man with one leg to balk
him, Big Jan? That called for a killing. Jan had no
faintest idea he might not be able to make good this
pleasant intention.
It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight
against odds, which has become a town tradition. If Jan
was formidable, a veritable bison, his opponent was no
cringing workman scared out of his wits and too timid
to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness,
knew what he could expect at Jan’s hands, and it made
him cool, collected, wary, and deadly. He was no more
the mild-mannered, soft-spoken Butterfly Man, but an-
other and a more primal creature, fighting for his life.
Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly
Man to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling
Slippy McGee.
Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved
him. Every time Jan came to hjs feet, roaring, thrash-
ing his arms like flails, making head-long, bull-like
rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him sprawl-
ing again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow,
and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging
Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like
quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of
his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even
as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down under-
neath. Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint
kept him down. And presently using every wrestler’s
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232
trick that he knew, and bringing to bear every ounce
of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly, busi-
nesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound
Big Jan into pulp. The devil that had been chained
these seven years was a-loose at last, rampant, folly
aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had not Jan
most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry ?
If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most
drastic punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay
still. He would lie prone for many a day, and he would
carry marks of it to his grave.
When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye
fast closing, and a puffed and swollen lip, staggered up-
right and stood swaying on his feet, he found himself
surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and women
who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze.
He was superhuman; he had accomplished the impos-
sible ; paid the dreaded Boss in his own coin, yea, given
him full measure to the running over thereof ! No man
of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received
such as Jan himself had gotten at this man’s hands to-
day. The reign of the Boss was over: and the con-
queror was a crippled man ! A great sighing breath of
sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too
profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand
and stare. When they wished, reverently, to help him,
he waved them aside.
“Where ’s my dog?” he demanded thickly through his
swollen lips. “Where ’s Kerry? If he ’s dead — ” he
cast upon fallen Jan a menacing glare.
“Your dog ’s in bed with the baby, and Ma ’s give bim
milk with brandy in it, and he drank it and growled at
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her, and the boys is holding him down now to keep him
from coming out to you, and he ain’t much hurt nohow,”
squealed one of Michael’s big-eyed children.
John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew
in a great gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and
laughed a deepchested, satisfied laugh, for all he was
staggering like a drunken man. Here Michael’s wife
Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction
engine — such was the shape in which nature formed her
— and falling on her knees, caught his hand to her .vast
bosom, weeping like the overflowing of a river and blub-
bering uncouth sounds.
“Qet up, you crazy woman!” snarled John Flint, his
face going brick-red. “Stop licking my hand, and
get up!” Although he did not know it, Katya symbol-
ized the mental attitude of every laborer in Appleboro
toward him from that hour.
“Here ’s Doctor Westmoreland! And here comes the
po-lice!” yelled a boy, joyous with excitement.
Westmoreland cast one by no means sympathetic glance
at the wreck on the ground, and his big arms went about
John Flint ; his fingers flew over him like an apprehensive
father’s.
“What ’s all this? Who ’s been fighting here, you
people?” demanded the town marshal’s brisk voice.
“Big Jan? And — good Lord! Mister Flint!” His
eyes bulged. He looked from Big Jan on the ground
to the Butterfly Man under Westmoreland’s hands, with
an almost ludicrous astonishment.
“I ’m sure sorry, Mr. Flint, if I have to give you a
little trouble for awhile, but — ”
“But you ’ll be considerably sorrier if you do it,” said
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SLIPPY McGEE
Dr. Walter Westmoreland savagely. "Yon take that
hoik over there to the jail, until I have time to see him.
I can’t have him sent home to his wife in that shape.
And look here. Marshal ; Jan got exactly what he de-
served ; it ’s been coming to him this long time. If
Inglesby’s bunch tries to take a hand in this, 1 'U try
to make Appleboro too hot to hold somebody. Under-
stand T”
The marshal was a wise enough man, and he under-
stood. Inglesby’s pet foreman had been all bat killed,
and Inglesby would be furiously angry. But — Mr. Flint
had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers perhaps
as potent as Inglesby’s. One thing more may have in-
fluenced the marshal : The hitherto timid and apathetic
people had merged into a compact and ominous ring
around the Butterfly Man and the doctor. A shrill mur-
mur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm.
There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so
foolish as to lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this
day. More yet, the beloved Westmoreland himself would
probably begin it. Never had the marshal seen West-
moreland look so big and so raging.
“All right, Doctor,” said he, hastily backing off. “I
reckon you ’re man enough to handle this.”
Some proud worshiper brought Mr. Flint his hat, knap-
sack, and net, and the mountainous Katya insisted upon
tenderly placing his glasses upon his nose — upside down.
Westmoreland used to say afterward that for a moment
he feared Flint was going to bite her hand ! Then man
and dog were placed in the doctor’s car and hurried home
to my mother; who made no comment, but put both in
the larger Guest Boom, the whimpering dog on a comfort
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at the foot of his master’s bed. Kerry had a broken
rib, but outside of this he was not injured. He would
be out and all right again in a week, Westmoreland
assured his anxious master.
“Oh, you man, you !” crowed Westmoreland. “John,
John, if anything were needed to make me love yon, this
would clinch it 1 Prying open nature’s fist, John, having
butterflies bear your name, working hand in glove with
your government, boosting boys, writing books, are all
of them fine big grand things. But if along with them
one ’s man enough to stand up, John, with the odds
against him, and punish a bully and a scoundrel, the only
way a bully and a scoundrel can feel punishment, that ’s
a heart-stirring thing, John ! It gets to the core of my
heart. It isn’t so much the fight itself, it ’s being able
to take care of oneself and others when one has to. Yes,
yes, yes. A fight like that is worth a million dollars to
the man who wins it!’’
Westmoreland may be president of the Peace League,
and tell us that force is all wrong. Nevertheless, his
great-grandmother was bom in Tipperary.
We kept the Butterfly Man indoors for a week, while
Westmoreland doctored a viciously black eye and sewed
up his lip. Morning and afternoon Appleboro called,
and left tribute of fruit and flowers.
“Qad, suh, he behaved like one of Stonewall Jack-
son’s men!” said Major Cartwright, pridefully. “No
yellow in him ; he ’s one of «*/”
At nights came the Polish folks, and these people whom
he had once despised because they “hadn’t got sense
enough to talk American,” he now received with a com-
plete and friendly understanding.
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SLIPPY McGEE
“I just come by and see bow you make to fed,
Meester.”
“Oh, I feel fine, Joe, thank you.”
There would be an interval of absolute silence, which
did not seem to embarrass either visited or visitor.
Then:
“Baby better now?” Meester would ask, interestedly.
“That beeg doctor, he oil heem an’ make heem well
aU right.”
After awhile: “I mebbe go now, Meester.”
“Good-night,” said the host, briefly.
At the door the Pole would turn, and look back, with
the wistfully animal look of the Under Dog.
“Those cheeldren, they make to get you the leetle
bug. You mebbe like that, Meester, yes? They make
to get you plenty much bug, those cheeldren. We all
make to get you the bug, Meester, thank you.”
“That ’s mighty nice of you folks.” Then one felt
the note in the quiet voice which explained his hold upon
people.
“Hell, no. We like to do that for you, Meester.
Thank you.” And closing the door gently after him,
he would slink off.
“They don’t need to be so allfired grateful,” said
John Flint frankly. “Parson, I ’m the guy to be grate-
ful. I got a whole heap more out of that shindy than
a black eye and a pretty mouth. I was bluemolding for
a man-tussle, and that scrap set me up again. You see
— I wasn’t sure of myself any more, and it was sour-
ing on my stomach. Now I know I haven’t lost out,
I feel like a white man. Yep, it gives a fellow the-
holiday-heart to be dead sure he ’s plenty able to use his
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fists if he ’s got to. Westmoreland ’s right about that.”
I was discreetly silent. God forgive me, in my heart
I also wag. most sinfully glad my Butterfly Man could
and would use his fists when he had to. I do not believe
in peace at any price. I know very well that wrong must
be conquered before right can prevail. But I should n’t
have been so set up I
“Here,” said he one morning. “Ask Madame to give
this to Jan’s wife. And say, beg her for heaven’s sake
to buy some salve for her eyelids, will you?” “This”
was a small roll of bills. “I owe it to Jan,” he ex-
plained, with his twistiest smile.
Westmoreland’s skill removed all outward marks of
the fray, and the Butterfly Man went his usual way, but
although he had laid at rest one cruel doubt, he was still
in deep waters. Because of his stress his clothes had
begun to hang loosely upon him.
Now the naturalist who knows anything at all of those
deep mysterious well-springs underlying his great pro-
fession, understands that he is a ’prentice hand learning
his trade in the workshop of the Almighty; wherein “the
invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that
are made.” As Paul on a time reminded the Romans.
Wherefore I who had learned somewhat from the
Little Peoples now applied what they had taught me,
and when I saw my man grow restless, move about aim-
lessly, withdraw into himself and become as one blind
and dumb and unhearing, I understood he was facing
a change, making ready to project himself into some
larger phase of existence as yet in the womb of the future.
So I did not question what wind drove him forth before
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SLIPPY McGEE
it like a lost leaf. The loving silent companionship of
red Kerry, the friendly faces of young children to whom
he was kind, the eyes of poor men and women looking to
him for help, these were better for him now than I.
But my mother was not a naturalist, and she was pro-
voked with John Flint. He ate irregularly, he slept as
it pleased God. He was “running wild” again. This
displeased her, particularly as Appleboro had at her
instigation included Mr. John Flint in its most exclusive
list, and there were invitations she was determined he
should accept. She had put her hand to the social plow
in his behalf, and she had no faintest notion of with-
drawing it. Once fairly aroused, Madame had that able-
bodied will heaven seems to have lavished so plenteously
upon small women: In recompense, I dare say, for lack
of size.
Therefore Mr. Flint duteously appeared at intervals
among the elect, and appeared even to advantage. And
my mother remarked, complacently, that blood will tell :
he had the air! He was not expected to dance, but he
was a superb cardplayer. He never told jokes, and so
avoided deadly repetition. He had in a large measure
that virtue the Chinese extol — the virtue of allowing
others to save their faces in peace. Was it any wonder
Mr. Flint’s social position was soon solidly, established?
He played the game as my mother forced it upon him,
though at times, I think, it bored and chafed him sorely.
What chafed him even more sorely was the unprece-
dented interest many young ladies — and some old enough
to know better — suddenly evinced in entomology.
Mr. Flint almost overnight developed a savage cun-
ning in eluding the seekers of entomological lore. One
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might suppose a single man would rejoice to see his drab
workroom swarm with these brightly-colored fluttering
human butterflies ; he bore their visits as visitations, dis-
playing the chastened resignation Job probably showed
toward the latest ultra-sized carbuncle.
“Cheer up!” urged Laurence, who was watching this
turn of affairs with unfeeling mirth. “The worst is yet
to come. These are only the chickens: wait until the
hens get on your trail !”
“Mr. Flint,” said Mary Virginia one afternoon, rub-
bing salt into his smarting wounds, “Mr. Flint, I am so
glad all the girls like you so much. Vou fascinate them.
They say you are such a profoundly clever and interest-
ing man, Mr. Flint! Why, some of those girls are per-
fectly demented about you!”
“Demented,” said he, darkly, “is the right word for
them when it comes down to fussing about me.” Now
Laurence had just caught him in his rooms, and, declar-
ing that he looked overworked and pale, had dragged
him forcibly outside on the porch, where we were now
sitting. Mary Virginia, in a white skirt, sport coat, and
a white felt hat which made her entrancingly pretty, had
been visiting my mother and now strolled over to John
Flint’s, after her old fashion.
“I feel like making the greatest sort of a fuss about
you myself,” she said honestly. “Anyhow, I ’m mighty
glad girls like you. It ’s a good sign.”
“If they do — though God knows I can’t see why — I ’m
obliged to them, seeing it pleases you!” said Flint, with-
out, however, showing much gratitude in eyes or voice.
“To tell you the truth, it looks to me at times as if they
were wished on me.”
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Mary Virginia tried to look horrified, and giggled
instead.
“If I could only make any of them understand any-
thing!’’ said the Butterfly Man desperately, “bat I
can’t. If only they really wanted to know, I ’d be more
than glad to teach them. But they don’t. I show them
and show them and tell them and tell them, over and over
and over again, and the same thing five minutes later,
and they haven’t even listened! They don’t care.
What do they take up my time and say they like my
butterflies for, when they don’t like them at all and don’t
want to know anything about them! That ’s what gets
me!”
Laurence winked at Mary Virginia, shamelessly.
“Bugs!” said he, inelegantly. “That’s what’s in-
tended to get you, you old duffer!”
“Mr. Flint,” said Mary Virginia, with dancing eyes.
“I don’t blame those girls one single solitary bit for
wanting to know all about — butterflies.”
“But they don’t want to know, I tell you!” Mr.
Flint’s voice rose querulously.
“My dear creature, I ’d be stuck on you myself if I
were a girl,” said Laurence sweetly. “Padre, prepare
yourself to say, ‘Bless you, my children!’ I see this
innocent’s finish.” And he began to sing, in a lacka-
daisical manner, through his nose :
“Now you ’re married you must obey,
You must be true to all you say,
Live together all your life — ”
No answering smile came to John Flint’s lips. He
made no reply to the light banter, but stiffened, and
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stared ahead of him with a set face and eyes into which
crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia, with a
quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.
“Don’t mind Laurence and me, we ’re a pair of sillies.
You and the Padre are too good to put up with us the
way you do,” she said, coaxingly. “And — we girls do
like you, Mr. Flint, whether we ’re wished on you or
not.”
That seductive “we” in that golden voice routed him,
horse and foot. He looked at the small hand on his
arm, and his glance went swiftly to the sweet and inno-
cent eyes looking at him with such frank friendliness.
“It ’s better than I deserve,” he said, gently enough.
“And it isn’t I ’m not grateful to the rest of them for
liking me, — if they do. It ’s that I want to box their
ears when they pretend to like my insects, and don’t.”
“Being a gentleman has its drawbacks,” said I,
tentatively.
“Believe me/” he spoke with great feeling. “It ’s
nothing short of doing a life-stretch!”
The boy and girl laughed gaily. When he spoke thus
it added to his. unique charm. So profoundly were they
impressed with what he had become, that even what he
had been, as they remembered it, increased their respect
and affection. That past formed for him a somber back-
ground, full of half-lights and shadows, against which
he stood out with the revealing intensity of a Rembrandt
portrait.
“What I came over to tell you, is that Madame says
you ’re to stay home this evening, Mr. Flint,” said Mary
Virginia, comfortably. “I ’m spending the night with
Madame, you ’re to know, and we ’re planning a nice
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SLIPPY McGEE
folksy informal sort of a time ; and yon 're to be borne.”
“Orders from headquarters,” commented Laurence.
“All right,” agreed the Butterfly Man, briefly.
Mary Virginia shook out her white skirts, and patted
her black hair into even more distractingly pretty dis-
order.
“I ’ve got to get back to the office — mean case I 'm
working on,” complained Laurence. “Mary Virginia,
walk a little way with me, won’t you! Do, child! It
will sweeten all my afternoon and make my work easier.”
“You haven’t grown up a bit — thank goodness!” said
Mary Virginia. But she went with him.
The Butterfly Man looked after them speculatively.
“Mrs. Eustis,” he remarked, “is an ambitious sort of
a lady, isn’t she! Thinks in millions for her daughter,
expects her to make a great match and all that. Miss
Sally Ruth told me she ’d heard Mrs. Eustis tried once
or twice to pull off a match to suit herself, but Miss Mary
Virginia wouldn’t stand for it.”
“"Why, naturally, Mrs. Eustis would like to see the
child well settled in life,” said I.
“Oh, you don’t have to be a Christian all the time,”
said he calmly. “I know Mrs. Eustis, too. She talked
to me for an hour and a half without stopping, one night
last week. See here, parson : Inglesby ’s got a roll
that outweighs his record. Suppose he wants to settle
down and reform — with a young wife to help him do it
— would n’t it be a real Christian job to lady’s-aid him!”
I eyed him askance.
“Now there ’s Laurence,” went on the Butterfly Man,
speculatively. “Laurence is making plenty of trouble,
but not so much money. No, Mrs. Eustis would n’t faint
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at the notion of Inglesby, but she ’d keel over like a
perfect lady at the bare thought of Laurence.”
“I don’t see,” said I, crossly, “why she should be
called upon to faint for either of them. Inglesby ’s —
Inglesby. That makes him impossible. As for the boy,
why, he rocked that child in her cradle.”
“That didn’t keep either of them from growing up
a man and a woman. Looks to me as if they were be-
ginning to find it out, parson.”
I considered his idea, and found it so eminently right,
proper, and beautiful, that I smiled over it. “It would
be ideal,” I admitted.
“Her mother wouldn’t agree with you, though her
father might,” he said dryly. And he asked:
“Ever had a hunch?”
“A presentiment, you mean?”
“No; a hunch. Well, I’ve got one. I’ve got a
hunch there ’s trouble ahead for that girl.”
This seemed so improbable, in the light of her fortu-
nate days, that I smiled cheerfully.
“Well, if there should be, — here are you and I to
stand by.”
“Sure,” said he, laconically, “that ’s all we ’re here
for — to stand by.”
Although it was January, the weather was again
springlike. All day the air was like a golden wine,
drenched in a golden sun. All day in the cedars’ dark
and vivid green the little wax-wings flew in and out,
and everywhere the blackberry bramble that “would
grace the parlors of heaven” was unfolding its crisp red
leaves and white buds ; and all the roads and woods were
gay with the scarlet berries of the casida, which the
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SLIPPY McGEE
robins love. And the nights were clear and still and
starry, nights of a beauty so vital one sensed it as some-
thing alive.
Because Mary Virginia was to spend that night at the
Parish House, Mrs. Eustis having been called away and
the house for once free of guests, my mother had seized
the occasion to call about her the youth in which her soul
delighted. To-night she was as rosy and bright-eyed as
any one of her girl-friends. She beamed when she saw
the old rooms alive and alight with fresh and laughing
faces and blithe figures. There was Laurence, with that
note in his voice, that light in his eyes, that glow and
glory upon him, which youth alone knows; and Dabney,
with his black hair, as usual, on end, and his intelligent
eyes twinkling behind his glasses; and Claire Dexter,
colored like a pearl set in a cluster of laughing girls;
and Mary Virginia, all in white, so beautiful that she
brought a mist to the eyes that watched her. All the
other gay and charming figures seemed but attendants
for this supremer loveliness, snow-white, rose-red, ebony-
black, like the queen’s child in the fairy-tale.
The Butterfly Man had obediently put in his appear-
ance. With the effect which a really strong character
produces, he was like an insistent deep undemote ttat
dominates and gives meaning to a lighter and merrier
melody. All this bright life surged, never away from,
but always toward and around him. Youth claimed him,
shared itself with him, gave him lavishly of its best, be-
cause he fascinated and ensnared its fresh imagination.
Though he should live to be a thousand it would ever
pay homage to some nameless magic quality of spirit
which was his.
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“Are you waiting something newt Have you found
another butterfly?” asked the young things, full of in*
terest and respect.
Well, he had promised a certain paper by a certain
time, though what people could find to like so much in
what he had to say about his insects —
“Because,” said Dabney, “you create in us a new feel-
ing for them. They ’re living things with a right to
their lives, and you show us what wonderful little lives
most of them are. Tou bring them close to us in a way
that doesn’t disgust us. I guess. Butterfly Man, the
truth is you ’ve found a new way of preaching the old
gospel of One Father and one life ; and the common sense
of common folks understands what you mean, thanks
you for it, likes you for it, and — asks you to tell us
some more.”
“Whenever a real teacher appears, always the common
people hear him gladly, ” said I, reflectively.
“Only,” said Mary Virginia, quickly, “when the
teacher himself is just as uncommon as he can be,
Padre.” She smiled at John Flint with a sincerity that
honored him.
He stood abashed and silent before this naive appreci-
ation. It was at once his greatest happiness and his
deepest pain — that open admiration of these clean-souled
youngsters.
When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still
white night outside called me. I went around to that
favorite retreat of mine, the battered seat shut in among
spireas and syringas. I like to say my rosary out of
doors. The beads dipping through my fingers soothed
me with their monotonous insistent petition. Prayer
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SLIPPY McGEE
brought me closer to the heart of the soft and shining
night, and the big still stars.
They shall perish, hut thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall
warn old ae a garment; ae a vesture shalt thou change them, and
they shall he dhanged; hut thou art the same and thy years shall
have no end.
The surety of the beautiful words brought the great
overshadowing Presence near me. And I fell into a half-
revery, in which the hailmarys wove themselves in and
out, like threads in a pattern.
Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart,
in a gale of laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I
noted, too, that no light as yet shone in the Butterfly
Man’s rooms. Well — he would hurl himself into the
work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour
or two. He was like that.
My retreat was just off the path, and near the little
gate between our grounds and Judge Mayne’s. Thus,
though I was completely hidden by the screening bushes
apd the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could plainly
see the two who presently came down the bright open
path. Of late it had given me a curious sense of com-
fort to see Laurence with Mary Virginia, and, I reflected,
he had been her shadow recently. I liked that. His
strength seemed to shield her from Hunter’s ambiguous
smile, from Inglesby’s thoughts, even from her own
mother’s ambition.
I could see my girl’s dear dark head outlined with a
circle of moonlight as with a halo, and it barely reached
my tall boy’s shoulder. Her hand lay lightly on his
arm, and he bent toward her, bringing his dose-cropped
brown head nearer hers. I couldn’t have risen or
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spoken then, without interrupting them. I merely
glanced out at them, smilingly, with my rosary in my
finger.
I reached the end of a decade: “As it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be —
They stopped at the gate, and fell silent for a space,
the girl with her darling face uplifted. The fleecy wrap
she wore fell about her slim shoulders in long lines,
glinting with silver. She did not give the effect of re-
moteness, but of being near and dear and desirable and
beautiful. The boy, looking upon her with his heart in
his eyes, drew nearer.
“Mary Virginia,” said he, eagerly and huskily and
passionately and timidly and hopefully and despairingly,
“Mary Virginia, are you going to marry anybody!”
Mary Virginia came back from the stars in the night
sky to the stars in the young man’s eyes. “Why, yes,
I hope I am,” said she lightly enough, but one saw she
had been startled. “What a funny boy you are, Lau-
rence, to be sure! Vou don’t expect me to remain a
spinster, do you!”
“You are going to be married!” This time despair
was uppermost.
“I most certainly am!” said Mary Virginia stoutly.
“Why, I confided that to you years and years and years
ago! Don’t you remember I always insisted he should
have golden hair, and sea-blue eyes, and a classic brow,
and a beautiful willingness to go away somewhere and
die of a broken heart if I ordered him to!”
“Who is it!”
“Who is who!” she parried provokingly.
“The chap you ’re going to marry!”
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Mary Virginia appeared to reflect deeply and anx-
iously. She/ pat oat a foot, with the eternal feminine
gesture, and dug a neat little hole in the graveled walk
with her satin toe.
“Laurence," said she. “I ’m going to tell you the
truth. The truth is, Laurence, that I simply hate to have
to tell you the truth.”
“Mary Virginia!" he stammered wretchedly. “You
hate to have to tell me the trutht Oh, my dear, why?
Why?"
“Because."
“But because why?”
“Because," said the dear hussy, demurely, “I don’t
know."
Laurence’s arms fell to his sides, helplessly; he craned
his neck and stared.
“Mary Virginia!" said he, in a breathless whisper.
Mary Virginia nodded. “It ’s really none of your
business, you know," she explained sweetly; “but as
you ’ve asked me, why, I ’ll tell you. That same ques-
tion plagues and fascinates me, too, Laurence. Why,
just consider! Here ’s a whole big, big world full of
men — tall men, short men, lean men, fat men, silly men,
wise men, ugly men, handsome men, sad men, glad men,
good men, bad men, rich men, poor men,— oh, all sorts
and kinds and conditions and complexions of men: any
one of whom I might wake up some day and find myself
married to: and I don’t know which one! It delights
and terrifies and fascinates and amuses and puzzles me
when I begin to think about it. Here I ’ve got to marry
Somebody and I don’t know any more than Adam’s
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housecat who and where that Somebody is, and he might
pop from around the corner at me, any minute! It
makes the thing so much more interesting, so much more
like a big risky game of guess, when you don’t know,
don’t you think!”
“No: it makes you miserable,” said Laurence, briefly.
“But I ’m not miserable at all!”
“You ’re not, because you don’t have to be. But I
am!”
“You! Why, Laurence! Why should you be miser-
able!” Her voice lost its blithe lightness; it was a little
faint. She said hastily, without waiting for his reply:
“I guess I ’d better run in. It was silly of me to walk
to the gate with you at this hour. I think Madame ’s
calling me. Goodnight, Laurence.”
“No, you don’t,” said he. “And it wasn’t silly of
you to come, either ; it was dear and delightful, and I
prayed the Lord to put the notion into your darling
head, and He did it. And now you ’re here you don’t
budge from this spot until you ’ve heard what I ’ve got
to say.
“Mary Virginia, I reckon you ’re just about the most
beautiful girl in the world. You ’ve been run after and
courted and flattered and followed until it was enough
to turn any girl’s head, and it would have turned any
girl’s head but yours. You could say to almost any man
alive, Come, and he ’d come — oh, yes, he ’d come quick.
You ’ve got the earth to pick and choose from — but I ’m
asking you to pick and choose me. I haven’t got as
much to offer you as I shall have some of these days,
but I ’ve got me myself, body and brain and heart and
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SLIPPY McGEE
soul, sound to the core, and all of me yours, and I think
that counts most, if yon care as I do. Mary Virginia,
will yon marry me?”
“Oh, but, Laurence! Why — Laurence — I — indeed,
I didn’t know — I didn’t think — ” stammered the girL
“At least, I didn’t dream yon cared — like that.”
“Didn’t you? Well, all I can say is, you ’ve been
mighty blind, then. For I do care. I guess I ’ve always
cared like that, only, somehow, it ’s taken this one short
winter to drive home what I ’d been learning all my
life?” said he, soberly. “I reckon I ’ve been just like
other fool-boys, Mary Virginia. That is, I spooned a bit
around every good looking girl I ran up against, but I
soon found out it wasn’t the real thing, and I quit.
Something in me knew all along I belonged to somebody
else. To you. I believe now — Mary Virginia, I believe
with all my heart — that I cared for you when you were
squalling in your cradle.”
“Oh! ... Did I squall, really?”
“SqnaUt Sometimes it was tummy and sometimes
it was temper. Between them you yelled like a Co-
manche,” said this astonishing lover.
Mary Virginia tilted her head back, adorably.
“It was very, very noble of you to mind me — under
tiie circumstances,” she conceded, graciously.
“Believe me, it was,” agreed Laurence. “I didn’t
know it, of course, but even at that tender age my fate
was upon me, for I liked to mind you. Even the bawling
did n’t daunt me, and I adored you when you resembled
a squab. Yes, I was in love with you then. I ’m in love
with you now. My girl, my own girl, I ’ll go out of this
;world and into the next one loving you.”
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“Then why,” she asked reproachfully, “haven’t you
said sot’’
“Why haven’t I said whatt’’
“Why, you know. That you — loved me, Laurence.”
Her rich voice had sunk to a whisper.
“Good Lord, haven’t I been saying itf”
“No, you haven’t! You ’ve been merely asking me
to marry you. But you have n’t said a word about lov-
ing me, until this very minute!”
“But you must know perfectly well that I ’m crazy
about you, Mary Virginia!” said the boy, and his voice
trembled with bewilderment as well as passion. “How
in heaven’s name could I help being crazy about yout
Why, from the beginning of things, there ’s never been
anybody else, but just you. I never even pretended to
care for anybody else. No, there ’s nobody but you.
Not for me. You ’re everything and all, where I ’m con-
cerned. And — please, please look up, beautiful, and tell
me the truth : look at me, Mary Virginia ! ”
The white-clad figure moved a hair’s breadth nearer;
the uplifted lovely face was very close.
“Do I really mean that to you, Laurence t All that,
really and truly t” she asked, wistfully.
“Yes! And more. And more!”
“I ’ll be the unhappiest girl in the world: I ’ll be the
most miserable woman alive — if you ever change your
mind, Laurence,” said she.
There was a quivering pause. Then:
“You care?” asked the boy, almost breathlessly.
“Mary Virginia, you care?” He laid his hands upon
her shoulders and bent to search the alluring face.
“Laurence!” said Mary Virginia, with a tremulous,
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SLIPPY McGEE
half -tearful laugh, “ Laurence, it ’s taken this one short
winter to teach me, too. And — you were mistaken, ut-
terly mistaken about those symptoms of mine. It
wasn’t tummy, Laurence. And it wasn’t temper. I
think — I am sure — that what I was trying so hard to
squall to you in my cradle was — that I cared, Laurence.”
The young man’s arms closed about her, and I saw the
young mouths meet. I saw more than that : I saw other
figures steal out into the moonlight and stand thus en-
twined, and one was the ghost of what once was I. That
other, lost Armand De Ranc6, looked at me wistfully with
his clear eyes; and I was very, very sorry for him, as
one may be poignantly sorry for the innocent, beautiful
dead. My hand tightened on my beads, and the feel of
my cassock upon me, as a uniform, steadied and sus-
tained me.
Those two had drawn back a little into the shadows
as if the night had reached out its arms to them. Such
a night belonged to such as these; they invest it, lend
it meaning, give it intelligible speech. As for me, I was
an old priest in an old cassock, with all his fond and
foolish old heart melting in his breast. Youth alone is
eternal and immortal. And as for love, it is of God.
“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be, world without end, Amen." I had finished the
decade. And then as one awakes from a trance I rose
softly and as softly crept back to the Parish House,
happy and at peace, because I had seen that which makes
the morning stars rejoice when they sing together.
“Armand,” said my mother, sleepily, “is that you,
dear? I must have been nodding in my chair. Mary
Virginia ’s just walked to the gate with Laurence.”
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“My goodness,” said she, half an hour later. “What
on earth can that child meant Hadn’t you better. call
her in, Armand?”
“No,” said I, decidedly.
Laurence brought her back presently. There must
have been something electrical in the atmosphere, for my
mother of a sudden sat bolt upright in her chair.
Women are like that. That is one of the reasons why
men are so afraid of them.
“Padre, and ,p’tite Madame,” began Laurence,
“you ’ve been like a father and mother to me — and —
and—”
“And we thought you ought to know,” said Mary
Virginia.
“My children!” cried my mother, ecstatically, “it is
the wish of my heart ! Always have I prayed our good
God to let this happen — and you see?”
“But it 's a great secret: it ’s not to be breathed, yet,”
said Mary Virginia.
“Except, of course, my father — ” began Laurence.
“And the Butterfly Man,” I added, firmly. Well
blowing none of us could keep such news from him.
“As for me,” said my mother, gloriously reckless, “I
shall open one of the two bottles of our great-grand-
father’s wine!” The last time that wine had been
opened was the day I was ordained. “Armand, go
and bring John Flint.”
When I reached his rooms Kerry was whining over a
huddled form on the porch steps. John Flint lay prone,
his arms outstretched, horribly suggestive of one cruci-
fied. At my step he struggled upright. I had my arms
about him in another moment.
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“Are you hurt? sick? John, John, my son, what is
it? "What is it?”
“No, no, I ’m all right. I — was just a little shaky
for the minute. There, there, don’t yon be scared,
father.” But his voice shook, and the hand I held was
icy cold.
“My son, my dear son, what is wrong with you?”
He controlled himself with a great effort. “Oh, I ’ve
been a little off my feed of late, father, that ’s alL See,
I ’m perfectly all right, now.” And he squared his
shoulders and tried to speak in his natural voice.
“My mqther wanted you to come over for a few min-
utes, there ’s something you ’re to know. But if yon
don’t feel well enough — ”
He seemed to brace himself. “Maybe I know it
already. However, I ’m quite able to walk over and hear
— anything I ’m to be told,” he said, composedly.
In the lighted parlor his face showed up pale and worn,
and his eyes hollow. But his smile was ready, his voice
steady, and the hand which received the wine Mary
Virginia herself brought him, did not tremble.
“It is to our great, great happiness we wish you to
drink, old friend,” said Laurence. Intoxicated with his
new joy, glowing, shining, the boy was magnificent.
The Butterfly Man turned and looked at him ; steadily,
deliberately, a long, searching, critical look, as if meas-
uring him by a new standard. Laurence stood the test.
Then the man’s eyes came back to the girl, rose-colored,
radiant, star-eyed, and lingered upon her. He arose,
and held up the glass in which our old wine seemed to
leap upward in little amber-colored flames.
“You ’ll understand,” said the Butterfly Man, “that
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I haven’t the words handy to my tongue to say what ’s
in my heart. I reckon I ’d have to be God for awhile,
to make all I wish for yon two come true.” There was
in look and tone and manner something so sweet and.
reverent that we were touched and astonished.
When my mother had peremptorily sent Laurence
home to the judge, and carried Mary Virginia off to talk
the rest of the night through, I went back to his rooms
with John Flint, in spite of the lateness of the hour:
for I was uneasy about him.
I think my nearness soothed him. For with that boy-
ish diffident gesture of his he reached over presently and
held me by the sleeve.
“Parson,” he asked, abruptly, “is a man bom with
a whole soul, or just a sort of shut-up seed of one! Is
one given him free, or has he got to earn and pay for one
before he gets it, parson T I want to know.”
“We all want to know that, John Flint. And the
West says Yes, and the East, No.”
“I ’ve been reading a bit,” said he, slowly and
thoughtfully. “I wanted to hear what both sides had to
say. Paul is pretty plain, on his side of the fence. But,
parson, some chaps that talk as if they knew quite as
much as Paul does, say you don’t get anything in this
universe for nothing ; you have to pay for what you get.
As near as I can figure it out, you land here with a chance
to earn yourself. You can quit or you can go on — it ’s
all up to you. If you ’re a sport and play the game
straight, why, you stand to win yourself a water-tight
fire-proof soul. Because, you see, you ’ve earned and
paid for it, parson. That sounded like good sense to
me. Looked to me as if I was sort of doing it myself.
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But when I began to go deeper into the thing, why, I
got stuck. For I can't deny I 'd been doing it more
because I had to than because I wanted to. But — which-
ever way it is, I ’m paying! Oh, yes, I 'm paying!”
“Ah, but so is everybody else, my son,” said I, sadly.
“. . . each in his own coin. . . . But after all isn’t one-
self worth while, whatever the cost!”
“I don’t know,” said he. “That ’s where I ’m stuck.
Is the whole show a skin game or is it worth while 1 But,
parson, whatever it is, you pay a hell of a price when
you buy yourself on the instalment plan, believe me!”
his voice broke, as if on a suppressed groan. “If I
could get it over and done with, pay for my damned
little soul in one big gob, I would n’t mind. But to have
to buy what I ’m buying, to have to pay what I ’m pay-
ing— ”
“You are ill,” said I, deeply concerned. “I was
afraid of this.”
He laughed, more like a croak.
“Sure I ’m sick. I ’m sick to the core of me, but you
and Westmoreland can’t dose me. Nobody can do any-
thing for me, I have to do it myself or go under.
That ’s part of paying on the instalment plan, too,
parson.”
“I don’t think I exactly understand — ”
“No, you wouldn’t. You paid in a lump sum, you
see. And you got what you got. Whatever it was that
got you, parson, got the best of the bargain.” His voice
softened.
“You are talking in parables,” said I, severely.
“But I ’m not paying in parables, parson. I ’m pay-
ing in me,” said he, grimly. And he laughed again, a
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“EACH IN HIS OWN COIN” 267
laugh of sheer stark misery that raised a chill echo in
my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve.
“I — can’t always can the squeal,” he whispered.
“If only I could help you!” I grieved.
“You do,” said he, quickly. “You do, by being you.
I hang on to you, parson. And say, look here! Don’t
you think I ’m such a hog I can’t find time to be glad
other folks are happy even if I ’m not. If there ’s one
thing that could make me feel any sort of way good, it ’s
to know those two who were made for each other have
found it out. It sort of makes it look as if some things
do come right, even if others are rotten wrong. I ’m
glad till it hurts me. I ’d like you to believe that.”
“I do believe it. And, my son! if you can find time
to be glad of others’ happiness, without envy, why,
you ’re bound to come right, because you ’re sound at
the core.”
“You reckon I ’m worth my price, then, parson?”
“I reckon you ’re worth your price, whatever it is. I
don’t worry about you, John Flint.”
And somehow, I did not. I left him with Kerry’s
head on his knee. His hand was humanly warm again,
and the voice^in which he told me goodnight was bravely
steady. He sat erect in his doorway, fronting the night
like a soldier on guard. If he were buying his soul on
the instalment plan I was sure he would be able to meet
the payments, whatever they were, as they fell due.
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CHAPTER XIV
THE WISHING CURL
W ITH February the cold that the Butterfly
Man had wished for came with a vengeance.
The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and
changed into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water.
Overnight the flowers vanished, leaving our gardens
stripped and bare, and our birds that had been so gay
were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled feathers,
with no song left in them. When rain came the water
froze in the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made
street-comers dangerous.
This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming
upon the heels of the unseasonably warm weather, seemed
to bring to a head all the latent sickness smoldering in
the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst forth like a con-
flagration. If the Civic League had not already done so
much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must
have had a very serious epidemic, as Dr. W r estmoreland
bluntly told the Town Council.
As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the
inevitable white hearse moved up and down, stopping
now at this door, now at that. In one narrow street, I
remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure eight
within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I
buried the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church
upon their innocence; I repeated over them ‘ ‘ The Lord
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hath given, the Lord hath taken away” — and knew in
my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of
money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of
their mothers* laps. And the earth was like iron; it
opened unwillingly to receive the babes of the poor.
In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shackB,
as regularly as Westmoreland and I, whose business and
duty lay there, came John Flint. He made no effort to
comfort parents, although these seemed to derive a curi-
ous consolation from his presence. He did not even come
because he wanted to ; he- came because the children
begged to see the Butterfly Man and one may not refuse
a sick child. He had made friends with them, made toys
for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at his
approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and
fever-hot hands were held out to him. All the force of
the affection of young children, their dazzling faith, the
almost unthinkable power upon their plastic minds of
those whom they trust, came home to him. He could
not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile,
the fact that children loved him. And once or twice a
small hand that clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and
under his eyes a child’s closed to this world.
Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked
sword-blade, ate like a testing acid into shams and hated
evasions and half-truths and subterfuges, had of late
been showing more and more behind John Flint’s re-
serve ; and I think it might have hardened into a men-
tality cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a
diamond, had it not been for the children whom he had
to see suffer and die.
There was one child of whom he was particularly fond
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— a child with the fairest of fair hair, de£p and sweet
blue eyes, and the quickest, shyest, most fleeting of
smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale serious face.
She had been one of the first of the mill folks’ children
to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to
watch for him, and then, holding on to one of his fin-
gers, she liked to trot sedately down the street beside him.
This child’s going was sudden and rather painful.
Westmoreland did what he could, but there was no
stamina in that frail body, so her’s had been one of the
small hands to fall limp and still out of John Flint’s.
The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her
arm; it had on a red calico dress, very garish in the
gray room, and against the child’s whiteness.
Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the
foot of the bed. His ruddy face showed wan and behind
his glasses his gray tired eyes winked and blinked.
‘ ‘There must be,” said the Doctor, as if to himself,
1 ‘some eternal vast reservoir somewhere, that stores up
all this terrible total of unnecessary suffering — the cruel
and needless suffering inflicted upon children and ani-
mals, in particular. Perhaps it ’s a spiritual serum used
for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than
we use it — as we use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no,
nothing ’s wasted ; there ’s a forward end to pain, some-
where.” He looked down at the child and shook his
head doubtfully:
“But when all is said and done,” he muttered, “what
do such as these get out of it ? Nothing — so far as we
can see. They ’re victims, they and the innocent beasts,
thrust into a world which tortures and devours them.
Why? Why? Why?”
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“ There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why
to God,” said I, painfully.
The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold
sword-straight, diamond-hard something in his eyes :
‘ ‘ Parson,” said he, grimly, “you ’re a million miles
off the right track — and you know it. Leaving things to
God — things like poor kids dying because they ’re gouged
out of their right to live — is just about as rotten stupid
and wrong as it can well be. God ’s all right ; he does
his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens!
Why, my butterflies answer that ! I ’m punk on your
catechism, and if this is all it can teach I hope I die
punk on it ; but as near as I can make out, original sin
is leaving things like this” — and he looked at his small
friend with her doll on her arm — “to God, instead of
tackling the job yourself and straightening it out.”
The child’s mother, a gaunt creature without a trace
of youth left in her, although she could not have been
much more than thirty, shambled over to a chair on the
other side of the bed. She wore a faded red calico
wrapper — a scrap of it had made the doll’s frock — and
a blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was
drawn painfully back from her forehead, and there was
a wispy fringe of it on the back of her scraggy neck. In
her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate uneasi-
ness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had
drawn itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no
luck in a horseshoe hung thus on a woman’s face. One
might fancy she felt no emotion, her whole demeanor
was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and
took up one of the thick shining curls ; half smiling, she
began to wrap it about her finger.
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“I ureter be right smart proud o’ Louisa’s hair,” she
remarked in a drawling, listless voice. “She come by it
from them uppidy folks o’ her pa’s. I ’ve saw her when
she wasn’t much more ’n hair an’ eyes, times her pa
was laid up with the misery in his chest, an’ me with
nothin’ but piecework weeks on end.
“. . . She was a cu’rus kind o’ child, Louisa was.
She sort o’ ’spicioned things wasn’t right, but you think
that child ever let a squeal out o’ her f Not her! Lemme
tell you-all somethin’, jest to show what kind o’ a heart
that child had, suhs.”
With a loving and mothering motion she moved the
bright curl about and about her hard finger. She spoke
half intimately, half garrulously; and from the curl she
would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly Man’s.
“ ’T was a Sarrerday night, an’ I was a-walkin’ up
an’ down, account o’ me bein’ awful low in the mind.
“ ‘Ma,’ says Louisa, ‘I ’m reel hungry to-night. You
reckon I could have a piece o’ bread with butter on itf
I wisht I could taste some bread with butter on it,’ says
she.
“ ‘Darlin’,* says I, tumble sad, ‘Po’ ma c’n give yo’
the naked bread an’ thanks to God I got even that to
give,’ I says. ‘But they ain’t a scrap o’ butter in this
house, an’ no knowin’ how to git any. Oh, darlin’, ma ’s
so sorry!’
“She looks up with that quick smile o’ her’n. Yes,
suh, Mr. Flint, she ups and smiles. ‘You don’t belong
to be sorry any, ma,’ says she, comfortin'. ‘Don’t you
mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin’, I just love naked
bread without no butter on it!’ says she. My God, Mr.
Flint, I bust out a-cryin’ in her face. Seemed like I
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natchelly could n't stand no mo ’ ! ” And smiling vaguely
with her poor old down-curved mouth, she went on fin-
gering the curl.
“Will you-all look a’ that!” she murmured, with pride.
“Even her hair 's lovin’, an’ sort o’ holds on like it
wants you should touch it. My Lord o’ glory, I ’m
glad her pa ain’t livin’ to see this day! He had his
share o’ misery, po’ man, him dyin’ o’ lung-fever an’
all. . . .
“Six head o’ young ones we ’d had, me an’ him. An’
they ’d all dropped off. Come spring, an’ one ’d be
gone. I kep’ a-comfortin’ that man best I could they
was better off, angels not bein’ pindlin’ an’ hungry an’
barefoot, an’ thanks be, they ain’t no mills in heaven.
But their pa he couldn’t see it thataway nohow. He
was tumble sot on them children, like us pore folks
gen ’rally is. They was reel fine-lookin’ at first.
“When all the rest of ’em had went, her pa he sort o’
sot his heart on Louisa here. ‘For we ain’t got nothin’
else, ma,’ says he. ‘An’ please the good Lord, we ’re
a-goin’ to give this one book-leamin’ an’ sich, an’ so be
she ’ll miss them mills,’ he says. ‘Ma, less us aim to
make a lady o’ our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain’t
done it a’ready,’ says her pa, ‘but we got to he’p Him
keep on an’ finish the job thorough.’ An’ here ’s him
an’ her both gone, an’ me without a God’s soul belongin’
to me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain’t it something
tumble the things happens to us pore folks t”
The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland
and me : doctor of bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what
had we to say to this woman stripped of all t But she,
with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke for herself
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and for ns. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden
face.
“It ain’t I ain’t grateful to you-all,” said she. “God
knows I be. You was good to Louisa. Doctor, you re-
member that day you give her a ride in your ottermobile
an’ forgot to bring her home for more ’n a hourf My,
but that child was happy!”
“ ‘Ma,’ says she when I come home that night, ‘you
know what heaven is?’
“ ‘Child,’ says I, ‘folks like me mostly knows what it
ain’t.’
“‘I beat you, ma!’ says she, clappin’ her hands.
•‘Heaven ain’t nothin’ much but country an’ roads an’
•trees an’ butterflies, an’ things like that,’ says she. ‘An’
•God ’s got ottermobiles, plenty an’ plenty ottermobiles,
an’ you ride free in 'em long ’s you feel like it, ’cause
that ’s what they ’s for. An’, ma,’ says she, ‘God’s,
showfers is all of ’em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.’
Yes, suh, you-all been mighty kind to Louisa. But I
•reckon,” she drawled, “it was Mr. Flint Louisa loved
•best, him bein’ a childem’s kind o’ man, an’ on account
.o’ Loujaney.” She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying
on the little girl’s arm.
“From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint
— which she named Loujaney, for her an’ me both —
•that child ain’t been parted from it.” She smiled down
.at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep
instead. It would have been easier to bear.
“Thg King’s Daughters, they give her a mighty nice
•doll off their Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she
•didn’t take to it like she done to Loujaney.
‘ That doll’s jest a visitin’ lady,’ says she, ‘but
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Loujaney, she ’s my child . Mr. Flint made her a-pur-
pose for me, same ’s God made me for you, ma, an’ she ’s
mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I ain’t
a mite ashamed afore her when we ain’t got nothin’, but
I turn ’t other’s face to the wall so she won ’t know. Lou-
janey ’s pore folks same ’s you an’ me, an’ she knows
prezac’ly how ’t is. That ’s why I love her so much.
“An’ day an’ night,” resumed the drawling voice,
“them two ’s been together. She jest lived an’ et an’
slept with that doll. If ever a doll gits to grow feelin’s,
Loujaney ’s got ’em. I s’pose I ’d best give that visitin’
doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain’t got the
heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I ’m a-goin’
to let them two go right on sleepin’ together.
“Mr. .Flint, suh, seein’ Louisa liked you so much, an’
it’s you she’d want to have it — ” she leaned over,
pushed the thick fair hair aside, and laid her finger upon
a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler, fairer than the
others, just above the little right ear.
“Her pa useter call that the wishin’ curl,” said she,
half apologetically. “You see, suh, he was a comical
sort of man, an’ a great hand for pertendin’ things. I
never could pertend. Things is what they is an’ per-
tendin’ don’t change ’em none. But him an’ her was
different. That ’s how come him to pertend the Lord ’d
put the rainbow’s pot o’ gold in Louisa’s hair with a wish
in it, an’ that ridiclous curl one side her head, like a
mark, was the wishin’ curl. He ’d pertend he could pull
it twict an’ say whisperin’, ‘ Bickery-ickery-ee — my wish
is cornin’ to me,’ an’ he ’d git it. An’ she liked to per-
tend ’twas so an’ she could wish things on it for me an’
git ’em. . . . Clo’es an’ shoes an’ fire an’ cake an’ beef-
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steak an’ batter an’ stayin’ home. . . . Just pertendin’,
you see.
“Mr. Flint, suh, I ain’t got a God’s thing any more
to wish for, but you bein’ the sort o’ man you are, I ’d
rather ’t was you had Louisa’s wishin’ curl, to remember
her by.” Snip ! went the scissors; and there it lay, pale
as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young
grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man’s open palm.
“Silver and gold have I none ; but such as I have give
I thee,” said the great Apostle to the lame man who
lay beside the gate of the temple that is called, Beauti-
ful.
“I ain’t got nothin’ else,” said the common mill-
woman; and laid in John Flint’s hand Louisa’s wishing-
curl.
He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on
her pillow. The human pity of the thing, its sheer stark
piercing simplicity, squeezed his heart as with a great
hand.
“My God!” he choked. “My — God!” and a rending
sob tore loose from his throat. For the first time
in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled, unashamed,
childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God’s
creatures, one of the great divine emotions. And when
that happens to a man it is as if his soul were winnowed
by the wind of an archangel’s wings.
Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with
the woman. She would know what further thing to say
to him.
Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his
hand on my shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly.
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“Father,” said he, earnestly, “when I witness such a
thing as we ’ve seen this morning, I do not lose faith. I
gain it.” And he gripped me heartily with his big
gloved hand. “Tell John Flint,” he added, “that
sometimes a rag doll is a mighty big thing for a man to
have to his credit.” Then he was gone, with a tear freez-
ing on his cheek.
“Angels,” John Flint had said more than once,
“are not middle-aged doctors with shoulders on them like
a barn-door, and ribs like a dray; angels don’t have
bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I ’d
pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tail-
feathers, for one Walter Westmoreland.”
I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what
I had just witnessed; sensing its true value. To those
slight and fragile things which had, for John Flint, out-
weighed the scales of evil — a gray moth, a butterfly’s
wing, a bird’s nest — I added a child’s fair hair, and a
rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.
There were but few people on the freezing streets, for
folks preferred to stay indoors and hug the fire. Front-
ing the wind, I walked with a lowered head, and thus
collided with a lady who turned a corner at the same time
I did.
“Don’t apologize, Padre,” said Mary Virginia, for it
was die. “It was my fault — I wasn’t looking where I
was going.”
“Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House!
Because my mother will be on her way to a poor thing
that ’s just lost her only child. Where have you been
these past weeks! I haven’t seen you for ages.”
“Oh, I ’ve been rather busy, too, Padre. And I
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haven’t been qnite well — ” she hesitated. I thought I
understood. For, possibly from some servant who had
overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter,
the news of Mary Virginia’s unannounced engagement
had sifted pretty thoroughly throughout the length and
breadth of Appleboro ; a town where an unfledged and
callow rumor will start out of a morning and come home
to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.
That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis ’s own quiet
will-power, everybody knew. She would not, perhaps,
marry Laurence in the face of her mother’s open oppo-
sition. Neither would she marry anybody else to please
her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a
pretty struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and
against, and settled itself with eager expectancy to watch
the outcome.
So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been hav-
ing a pleasant time. Indeed, it struck me that she was
really unwell. One might even suspect she had known
sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the languor
of her manner.
Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoul-
ders square, the freezing weather only intensifying his
glowing fairness, came Howard Hunter. The man was
clear red and white. His gold hair and beard glittered,
his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed
to rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him
delighted in its native air.
As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather
crept into Mary Virginia’s eyes. She did not speak, but
bowed formally. Mr. Hunter, holding her gaze for a
moment, lifted his brows whimsically and smiled; then,
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bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her
lips closed firmly upon each other.
Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to
the Parish House gate. No, she said, she couldn’t come
in. But I wag to give her regards to the Butterfly Man,
and her love to Madame.
“Parson,” the Butterfly Man asked me that night,
“have you seen Mary Virginia recently?”
“I saw her to-day.”
“I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She
hasn’t been here lately, has she?”
“No. She hasn’t been feeling well. I hear Mrs*
Eustis has been very outspoken about the engagement,
and I suppose that ’s what worries Mary Virginia.”
“I don’t think so. She knew she had to go up against
that, from the first. She ’s more than a match for her
mother. There ’s something else. Didn’t I tell you I
had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well, I ’ve
got a hunch it ’s here.”
“Nonsense!” said I, shortly.
“I know,” said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrele-
vantly: “It ’s generally known, parson, that Eustis will
be nominated. Inglesby ’s managed to gain considerable
ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say if it was n’t for
Eustis he ’d win. As it is, he ’ll be swamped. I hear
he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne
was going to play against him — for he knqws Laurence
brought Eustis out. Inglesby ’s mighty sore. He ’s the
sort that hates to have to admit he can’t get what he
wants.”
“Then he ’d better save himself the trouble of having
to put it to the test,” said I.
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“I ’m wondering,” said John Flint. ”1 wish 1
hadn’t got that hnnch!”
I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time.
Just then I moved breathlessly in a horrid round of
sickbeds, for the wave had reached its height; already it
had swept seventeen of my flock out of time into eternity.
I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings,
to find Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was
standing in the middle of the room, his hands clasped
behind his back.
“Padre,” said he by way of greeting, “have you seen
Mary Virginia lately? Has Madame?”
“No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the
street. But she has been sending me help right along,
bless her.”
“Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?”
“No, I don’t think so. But we ’ve been frightfnlly
busy of late, you understand.”
“No, neither of you know,” said Laurence, in a low
voice. “You wouldn’t know. Padre, I — don’t look at
me like that, please ; I ’m not ill. But, without reason —
I swear to you before God, without any reason whatever,
that I can conjure up — she has thrown me over, jilted
me — Mary Virginia, Padre ! And I’m to forget her.
I ’m to forget her, you understand f Because she can’t
marry me.” He spoke in a level, quiet, matter of fact
voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.
I laid my hand upon him. “Now tell me,” said I,
“what you have to tell me.”
“I ’ve really told you all I know,” said Laurence.
“Day before yesterday she sent for me. You can ’t think
how happy it made me to have her send for me, how
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happy I ’ve been since I knew she cared ! I felt as if
there was n’t anything I could n’t do. There was noth-
ing too great to be accomplished —
“Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the
long drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She
was so like ice I wonder now she didn’t thaw. All in
white, and cold, and frozen. And she said she could n’t
marry me. That ’s why she had sent for me — to tell me
that she meant to break our engagement: Mary Virginia!
“I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in
asking that, was I not? And she wouldn’t let me get
close to her, Padre. She waved me away. I got out of
her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn’t say what
those reasons were ; but there were reasons. Her reasons,
of course. When I began to talk, to plead with her,
she begged me not to make things harder for her, but to
be generous and go away. She just could n’t marry me,
did n’t I understand? So I must release her.’’
He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed
and darkened.
“And you said — ?’’
“I said,’’ said Laurence simply, “that she was mine
as much as I was hers, and that I ’d go just then because
she asked me to, but I was coming back. I tried to
see her again yesterday. She wouldn’t see me. She
sent down word she wasn’t at home. But I knew all
along she was. Mary Virginia, Padre!
“I tried again. I have n’t got any pride where she ’a
concerned. Why should I? She ’s — she ’s my soul, I
think. I can’t put it into words, because you can’t
put feelings into words, but she ’s the pith of life. Then
I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got
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down to the level of bribing the colored maid to take the
notes to her, one every hour, like a medicine, and slip
them under her door. I know she received them. I re*
peated it again to-day. It ’s Mary Virginia at stake,
and I can’t take chances, can 1 ? And this afternoon she
sent this.
“Qh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of ques-
tions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that, too!
Don’t you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the In-
evitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M. V. E.”
The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agi-
tation.
“Well?” said Laurence. But I stood staring at the
crumpled bit of paper. I knew what I knew. I knew
what my mother had thought fit to reveal to me of the
girl’s feelings : Mary Virginia had been very sure. I re-
membered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was
sure she was faithful, for I knew my girL And yet —
There came back to me a morning in spring and I
riding gaily off in the glad sunshine, full of faith and
of hope. To find what I had found. I handed the note
back, in silence.
“Oh, why, why, why?” burst out the boy, in a gust
of acute torment. “For God’s sake, why? Think of
her eyes and her mouth, Padre — and her forehead like a
saint’s — No, she ’s not false. God never made such
eyes as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I ’ve got to
believe in her. I tell you, I belong to her, body and
soul.” He began to walk up and down the room, and
his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over them.
“I could forgive her for not loving me, if she does n’t
love me and found it out, and said so. Women change,
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do they not? But — to take a man that loves her — and
tear his living soul to shreds and tatters —
“If she ’s a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to be-
lieve t "Why should she do it, Padre — to me that love
herf Oh, my God, think of it: to be betrayed by the
best beloved ! No, I can’t think it. This is n’t just any
light girl : this is Mary Virginia !”
I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over
me, and once again as broad, perhaps. We two fell into
step. I did not attempt to counsel or console.
“Here I come like a whining kid, Padre,” said he, re-
morsefully, “piling my troubles upon your shoulders that
carry such burdens already. Forgive me!”
“I shouldn’t be able to forgive you if you didn’t
come,” said I. Up and down the little room, up and
down, the two of us.
Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man’s
head followed it.
“Didn’t I hear Laurence talking?” asked he, smiling.
The smile froze at sight of the boy’s face. He closed the
door, and leaned against it.
“What ’s wrong with her?” he asked, quickly. It did
not occur to us to question his right to ask, or to wonder
how he knew.
In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his
hand for the note, read it in silence, and handed it back.
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
“Trouble,” said he, curtly; and he asked, reproach-
fully, “Don’t you know her, both of you, by this
time?”
“I know,” said Laurence, “that she has sent me away
from her.”
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“Because she wants to, or because die thinks die has
tot” asked John Flint
“Why should she do so unless it pleased her!” I asked
sorrowfully.
His eyes flashed. “Why, she ’s herself t A girl like
her could n’t play anybody false because there ’s no false-
ness in her to do it with. What are you going to do
about itf”
“There is nothing to do,” said Laurence, “but to re-
lease her; a gentleman can do no les.”
John Flint’s lips curled. “Release herf I ’d hang
on till hell froze over and caught me in the ice ! I ’d
wait. I ’d write and tell her she didn’t need to make
herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough about
her for the two of us, because she didn’t trust me
enough to tell me what her trouble was, so I could help
her. That first and always I was her friend, right here,
whenever she needed me and whatever she needed me
for. And I ’d stand by. What else is a man good fort”
“I believe,” said I, “that John Flint has given you the
right word, Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful. ’ ’
Laurence lifted his haggard face. “There isn’t any
question of my being faithful to her, Padre. And I
couldn’t make myself believe that she ’s less so than L
What Flint says tallies with my own intuition. I ’ll
write her to-night.” He laid his hand on John Flint’s
arm. “You ’re all right, Bughunter,” said he, earnestly.
“ ’Night, Padre.” Then he was gone.
“Do you think,” said John Flint, when he had re-
jected every conjecture his mind presented as the possi-
ble cause of Mary Virginia’s action, “that Inglesby could
be at the bottom of this!”
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“I think,” said I, “that you have an obsession where
that man is concerned. He is a disease with you. Good)
heaven, what could Inglesby possibly have to do with
Mary Virginia’s affairs?”
“That ’s what I 'm wondering. Well, then, who is
it?”
“Perhaps,” said I, unwillingly, “it is Mary Virginia
herself.”
“Forget it ! She ’s not that sort.”
“She is a woman.”
“Ain’t it the truth, though?” he jeered. “What a
peach of a reason for not acting like herself, looking like
herself, being lii e herself I She’s a woman! So are all
the rest of the folks that weren’t bom men, if you ’ll
notice. They ’re women; we ’re men: and both of us
are people. Get it?”
“I get it,” said I, annoyed. “Your attitude, John
Flint, is a vulgar platitude. And permit me to — ”
“I ’ll permit you to do anything except get cross,”
said he, quickly. The ghost of a smile touched his face.
“Being bad-tempered, parson, suits you just about as
well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button.”
“I am a human being,” I began, frigidly.
“And I ’m another. And so is Mary Virginia. And
there we are, parson. I ’m troubled. I don’t like the
looks of things. It ’s no use telling myself this is none
of my business; it is very much my business. You re-
member . . . when I came here . . .” he hesitated, for
this is a subject we do not like to discuss, “what you
were up against . . . parson, I ’ve thought you must
have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned
things on the cross, and that ’s why you held on to me.
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But with the kids, it was different — particularly the little
girl. The first thing I ever got from her was a lovely
look, the first time ever I set eyes on her she came with
an underwing moth. I ’d be a poor sort that would n’t
be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust,
if she needed me now, wouldn’t I?”
“But,” said I, perplexed, “what can you dot A
young lady has seen fit to break her engagement; young
ladies often see fit to do that, my dear fellow. This is n ’t
an uncommon case. Also, one doesn’t interfere in a
lady’s private affairs, not even when one is an old priest
who has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly
Man who is her devoted friend. Don’t you seet”
“I see there ’s something wrong,” said he, doggedly.
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t give one the right
to pry into something she evident! T doesn’t wish to re-
veal,” I told him.
“I suppose,” said he, heavily, “you are right. But
if you hear anything, let me know, won’t youf”
I promised ; but I found out nothing, save that it had
not been Mrs. Eustis who influenced her daughter’s
action. This came out in a call Mrs. Eustis made at the
Parish House.
“My dear,” she told my mother, “when she told me
she had broken that engagement, I was astounded ! But
I can’t say I wasn’t pleased. Laurence is a dear boy;
and his family ’s as good as ours — no one can take that
away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have
done better.
“I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with
her. I cried and cried. But she ’s James Eustis to the
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life — you might as well try to move the Rock of Gibral-
tar. Then one morning she came to my room and told
me she found she couldn’t marry Laurence! And she
had already told him so, and broken her engagement,
and I wasn’t to ask her any questions. I didn’t. I
was too glad.”
“And — Laurence — t” asked my mother, ironically.
“Laurence? Laurence is a man. Men get over that
sort of thing. I ’ve known a man to be perfectly mad
over his wife — and marry, six months after her death.
They ’re like that. They always get over it. It ’s their
nature.”
“Let us hope, then, for Laurence’s peace of mind,”
said my mother, “that he ’ll get over it — like all the rest
of his sex. Though I should n’t call Laurence fickle, or
faithless, if you ask me.”
“He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself
and James adores him. If I had two or three daughters,
I ’d be willing to let one of them marry Laurence —
after awhile. But having only one I must say I want
her to do better.”
“I see,” said my mother. To me she said later:
“And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite
appreciate Mrs. Eustis’s point of view. I was somewhat
like that myself, once upon a time.”
“You? Never!”
My mother smiled tolerantly.
“Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I
did not relish. It was much easier for me to bear the
Church!” ,
That night I went over to John Flint’s, for I thought
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that the fact of Mary Virginia ’a deliberately choosing to
act as she had done would in a measure settle the mat-
ter and relieve his anxiety.
There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay
stretched; little white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late,
occupied a chair he had taken over for his own use and
from which he refused to be dislodged. Major Cart-
wright had just left, and the room still smelt of his
cigar, mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the
burning cedar.
On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the
Butterfly Man’s entire secular library: Andrew Lang’s
translation of Homer; Omar; Bichard Burton’s Kasi-
dah; Saadi’s Qnlistan, over which he chuckled; Robert
Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry
Finn; Treasure Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had
given him — I never could induce him to change it for
my own Donai version — ; one or two volumes of Shake-
speare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely
fat; and the “Purely Original Verse of James Gordon
Coogler,” which a light-minded professor of mathe-
matics at the University of South Carolina had given
him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came
and went, but these remained. To-night it was the
Bible which lay open, at the Book of Psalms.
“Look at this.” He laid his finger on a verse of the
nineteenth: “The testimony of the Lord is sure, mak-
ing wise the simple.”
“The times I ’ve turned that over in my mind, out in
the woods by night and the fields by day!” said the
Butterfly Man, musingly. “The simple is me, parson,
and the testimony is green things growing, and butter-
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flies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and
Louisa’s hair, and— well, about everything, I reckon.
“Yes, everything ’s testimony, and it can make wise
the simple — if he ’s not too simple. I reckon, parson,
the simple is lumped in three lots — the fool for a little
while, Hie fool for half the day, and the life-everlasting
twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.
“Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind
that used to make old man Solomon wall his eyes and
throw fits and then get busy and hatch out proverbs with
stings in their tails. A lot of us are half-the-day fools;
and all the rest are fools for a little while. There ’s no-
body bom that has n’t got his times and seasons for being
a fool for a while. But that ’s the sort of simple the
testimony slams some sense into. Like me,” he added
earnestly, and closed the great Book.
I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he
surmised, Mrs. Eustis was not responsible for Mary Vir-
ginia’s change of mind — or perhaps of heart. He
nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I had
come in, he had been from time to time casting at me
rather speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed
on the table, smiled sheepishly, and presently reached
for a package, unwrapped it, and laid before me a book.
“ ‘The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,’ ” I
read, “By John Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De RancA
With notes and drawings by Father De Rand.” It bore
the imprint of a great publishing house.
“You suggested it more than once,” said John Flint.
“Off and on, these two years, I ’ve been working on it.
All the notes I particularly asked you for were for this.
Mighty fine and acute notes they are, too — you ’d never
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have been willing to do it if you ’d known they were for
publication — I know you. And I saved the drawings.
I ’m vain of those illustrations. Abbot’s weren’t in it,
next to yours.”
As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying
plant and insect. I have but little originality, but this
very limitation made the drawings more valuable. They
were almost painfully exact, the measurements and color-
ation being as approximately perfect as I could get
them.
Now that the book has been included in all standard
lists I need n’t speak of it at length — the reviewers have
given it what measure of bricks and bouquets it deserved.
But it is a clever, able, comprehensive book, and that is
why it has made its wide appeal
Every least credit that could possibly be given to me,
he had scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of
note and drawing. He made light enough of his own
great labor of compilation, but his preface was quick to
state his 4 ‘great indebtedness to his patient and wise
teacher.”
One sees that the situation was not without irony.
But I could not cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship
nor dim his happiness by disclaiming one jot or tittle of
what he had chosen to accredit me with. It is more
blessed to give than to receive, but much more difficult
to receive than to give.
“Do you like it?” he asked, hopefully.
“I am most horribly proud of it,” said I, honestly.
“Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?”
“Sure. Hand on my heart.”
“All right, then,” said he, sighing with relief.
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“Here ’s your share of the loot,” and he pushed a check
across the table.
“But — ” I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of
sorts.
“But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I ’m curious. What
are you going to do with yours?”
“What are you going to do with yours?” I asked in
return.
He reddened, hesitated ; then his head went up.
“I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I ’ m
kin to Louisa’s ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa’s
ma ’s my widow. It ’s a devil of a responsibility for a
live man to have a widow. It worries him. Just to get
her off my mind I ’m going to invest my share of this
book for her. She ’ll at least be sure of a roof and fire
and shoes and clothes and bread with butter on it and
staying home sometimes. She 11 have to work, of course ;
anyway you looked at it, it wouldn’t be right to take
work away from her. She ’ll work, then; but she won’t
be worked. Louisa ’s managed to pull something out of
her wishin’ curl for her ma, after all. I ’m sure I hope
they 11 let the child know.”
I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at
him, the red in hip tanned cheek deepened.
“As a matter of fact, parson,” he explained, “some-
body ought to do something for a woman that looks like
that, and it might just as well be me, I ’m willing to
pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth the
other way up, and I hc^pe she 11 buy a back-comb for
those bangs on her neck. ”
“And all this,” said I, “came out of one little wishin'
curl, Butterfly Man ? ”
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88 *
“But what else could I dot" he wondered, “when
I *ra kin to Loujaney by bornatuxif ’’ and to hide his
feeling, -he asked again:
“Now what are you going to do with yours t”
I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out
of which the diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and
into which I am sure that dear child ’a eurl had wished
this milder, dearer light.
“You want to know what I am going to do with
minef ” said I, airily. “Well; as for me, the very first
thing I am going to do is to purchase, in perpetuity, a
fine new lamp for St. Stanislaos!"
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CHAPTER XV
IN THU MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
F ■ '\TMID tentative rifts and wedges of blue had
I ventured back into the cold gray sky, and a
iJL stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring.
One morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery
sunshine the painted wings of the Red Admiral flash by,
and I welcomed him as one welcomes the long-missed face
of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red Admiral.
He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his
gay wings are they have nevertheless borne this daunt-
less small Columbus of butterflies across unknown seas
and around uncharted lands, until like his twin-sister
the Painted Lady he has all but circled the globe. A
few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in
the young grass, dared the unfriendly days before their
time as if to coax the lagging spring to follow.
The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and
for a space the little white hearse ceased to go glimmer-
ing by. Then at many windows appeared small faces
bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the shadow
through which they had just passed. Although they
were on side streets in the dingy mill district, far re-
moved from our pleasant windows that looked out upon
trees and flowers, all Appleboro was watching these wan
visages with wiser and kinder eyes.
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Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing
of our civic conscience was a small person who might
have justly thought we hadn’t any: I mean Loujaney’s
little ma, whose story had crept out and gone from lip
to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which
there could be no refusal.
When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted
old rebel hurried over to the Parish House and thrust
into my hand a lean roll of bills. And the major is by
no means a rich man.
“It ’s not tainted money,” said the major, “though
some mighty good Bourbon is goin’ to turn into pap on
account of it. However, it ’s an ill wind that does n’t
blow somebody good — Marse Robert can come on back
upstairs now an’ thaw himself out while watchin’ me
read the Lamentations of Jeremiah — who was evidently
sufferin’ from a dry spell himself.”
On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose
for his text that verse of Matthew which bids us take
heed that we despise not one of these little ones because
in heaven their angels do always behold the face of our
Father. And then he told his people of that little one
who had pretended to love dry bread when she could n’t
get any butter — in Appleboro. And who had gone to
her rest holding to her thin breast a rag-doll that was
kin to her by bomation, Loujaney being poor folks her-
self and knowing prezactly how ’t was.
Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the
Baptist brethren looked at each other. Of course, it_
wasn’t their fault any more than anybody else’s. — In a
very husky voice their pastor went on to tell them of
the curl which the woman who had n’t a God’s thing left
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to wish for had given as a remembrance to “that good
and kind man, our brother John Flint, sometimes known
as the Butterfly Man.”
Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and
heightened its effect by an editorial couched in the plain-
est terms. We were none of us in the humor to hear
a spade called an agricultural implement just then, and
Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends
and the cemetery both showed a marked increase.
Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn’t
exactly know how nor where to begin doing it. Lau-
rence, insisting that this was really everybody’s busi-
ness, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and the
Clarion * requested every man who didn’t intend to
bring his women-folks to that meeting to please stay
home himself. Wherefore Appleboro town and county
came with the wife of its bosom — or maybe the wife came
and fetched it along.
Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner
of addressing the feminine portion of his audience would
have made his gallant grandfather challenge him. He
hadn’t a solitary pretty phrase to tickle the ears of the
ladies — he spoke of and to them as women.
“And did you see how they fell for him?” rejoiced
the Butterfly Man, afterward. “From the kid in a
middy up to the great old girl with three chins and a
prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
you ’re in dead earnest, can the ladies ; just go after
women as women and they ’re with you every time.
They know.”
A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and
after her a girl from the mills, whose two small brothers
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went in one night. There were no set speeches. Every-
body who spoke had something to say; and everybody
who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland,
who like Saul the king was taller by the head and
shoulders than all Israel, bulked up big and good and
begged us to remember that we could n’t do anything of
permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said
gruffly that Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in
this respect upon the frail shoulders of one old priest,
and that the Guest Booms were overworked. Did n’t the
town want to do its share now? The town voted, unan-
imously, that it did.
There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else
had anything to say T Apparently, anybody else had n’t.
“Well, then,” said Laurence, smiling, “before we ad-
journ, is there anybody in particular that Appleboro
County here assembled wants to heart”
And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an
immense multitude of bees :
“The Butterfly Mm!” And louder: “The Butterfly
Man!”
Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the
stamping of feet. And there he was, with Westmoreland
and Laurence behind him as if to keep him from bolting.
His face expressed a horrified astonishment. Twice,
thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then :
“If” in a high and agonized falsetto.
“You!” Appleboro County settled back with rustles
of satisfaction. “Speech! Speech!” From a corn-
dub man, joyfully.
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“Oh, marmar, look! It’s the Butterfly Man, mar-
mar!” squealed a child.
“A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!” For the
first time a “hand” felt that he might speak out openly
in Appleboro.
John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these
people who ought to know very well that he had n’t any-
thing to say: what should he have to sayt He was em-
barrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
then, after all, they weren’t anything but people, just
folks like himself ! When he remembered that his panic
subsided. For a moment he reflected; as if satisfied,
he nodded slightly and thrust his hand into his breast
pocket.
“Instead of having to listen to me you ’d better just
look at this, ’ ’ said the Butterfly Man. 4 4 Because this can
talk louder and say more in a minute than I could be-
tween now and Judgment.” And he held out Louisa’s
dear fair whimsy of a curl ; the sort of curl mothers tuck
behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss.
“I haven’t got anything to say,” said the Butterfly
Man. “The best I can do is just to wish for the children
all that Louisa pretended to pull out of her wishin’ curl
— and never got. I wish on it that all the kids get a
square deal — their chance to grow and play and be
healthy and happy and make good. And I wish again,”
said the Butterfly Man, looking at his hearers with his
steady eyes, “I wish that you folks, every God-blessed
one of you, will help to make that wish come true, so far
as lies in your power, from now until you die!” His
funny, twisty smile flashed out. He put the fairy tress
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back into his breast pocket, made a casual gesture to
imply that he had concluded his wishes for the present ;
^nd walked off in the midst of the deepest silence that
had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.
But however willing we might be, we discovered that
we could not do things as quickly or as well as might
be wished. People who wanted to help blundered tact-
lessly. People who wanted to be helped had to be in-
vestigated. People who ought to be helped were sus-
picious and resentful, couldn’t always understand or
appreciate this sudden interest in their affairs, were in-
clined to slam doors, or, when cornered, to lie stolidly,
with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.
Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man
came unobtrusively forward, discovering in himself that
amazing diplomacy inherent in the Irish when they
attend to anybody’s business but their own. It was
amusing to watch the only democrat ini a solidly Demo-
cratic county infusing something of his own unabashed
humanness into proceedings which but for him might
have sloughed into
Organized charity, carefully iced.
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
Having done what was to be done, he went about his
own affairs. Nobody gushed over him, and he escaped
that perilous popularity which is as a millstone around
a man’s neck. Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had
stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and
they entertained for him a feeling that was n’t any more
tangible, say, than pure air, and no more emotional than
pure water,* but was just about as vital and life-giving*
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I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my
private judgment. I rose so in my own estimation that
I fancy I was a bit condescending to St. Stanislaus ! I
was vain of the Butterfly Man’s standing — folks could n’t
like him too much, to please me. And I was greatly
interested in the many invitations that poured in upon
him, invitations that ranged all the way from a birthday
party at Michael Karski’s to a state dinner at the
Eustis’s.
From Michael’s he came home gaily, a most outrageous
posy pinned upon him by way of honor, and whistling
a Slavic love song so dismal that one inferred love must
be something like toothache for painfulness. He had
had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been
there with his wife, an old friend of Michael’s Katya.
Although pale, and still somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan
had willingly enough shaken hands with his conqueror.
It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan
should presently enter into a sort of Dual Alliance.
Meester Fleent was to be Arbitrator Extraordinary.
When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan was only to
tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said
her prayers to the man who had trounced Jan into
righteousness.
But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went "with
my mother, he came home somber and heavy-hearted.
Laurence was conspicuously absent; it is true he was
away, defending his first big case in another part of the
State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspic-
uously present, apparently on the best of all possible
terms with himself, the world in general, and Mrs. James
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Eustis in particular. His presence in that house, in
the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering atten-
tion. She was deeply impressed by him. He had just
aided her pet mission in China — what he had given the
heathen would have buttered my children’s bread for
many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing
of the shibboleth that Woman’s Sphere is the Home,
wherein she should be adored, enshrined, and protected.
Woman and the Home! All the innate chivalry of
Southern manhood —
I don’t know that Louisa’s Ma was ever enshrined
or protected by the chivalry of any kind of manhood,
no, nor any of the mill women. Their kind don’t know
the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with
Mr. Inglesby’s noble sentiments.
“Parson, you should have heard him !” raved the But-
terfly Man. “There ’s a sort of man down here that ’s
got chivalry like another sort ’s got hookworm, and he
makes the man that has n’t got either want to set up an
image to the great god Dam !
“You ’d think being chivalrous would be enough for
him, wouldn’t you?’’ continued the Butterfly Man, bit-
terly. “Nix ! What ’s he been working the heavy char-
ity lay for, except that it ’s his turn to be a misunder-
stood Christian? Doesn’t charity cover a multitude of
skins, though? And doesn’t it beat a jimmy when it
comes to breaking into society!”
Mary Virginia, he added in an altered voice, had been
exquisite in a frock all silver lace and shimmery stuffs
like moonbeams, and with a rope of pearls about her
throat, and in her black hair. Appleboro folks do not
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IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT 291
affect orchids, but Mary Virginia wore a huge cluster
of those exotics. She had been very gracious to the But*
erfly Man and Madame. But only for a brief bright
minute had she been the Mary Virginia they knew. All
the rest of the evening she seemed to grow statelier,
colder, more dazzlingly and imperially regal. And her
eyes were like frozen sapphires under her level brows,
and her mouth was the red splendid bow of Pride.
Watching her, my mother was pained and puzzled ; as
for the Butterfly Man, his heart went below zero. Those
who loved Mary Virginia had cause for painful re-
flections.
Blinded by her beauty, were we judging her by the
light of affection, instead of the colder light of reason t
We couldn’t approve of her behavior to Laurence, nor
was it easy to refrain from disapproval of what appeared
to be a tacit endurance of Inglesby’s attention. She
couldn’t plead ignorance of what was open enough to
be town talk — the man’s shameless passion for herself,
a passion he seemed to take delight in flaunting. And
she made no effort to explain; she seemed deliberately
to exclude her old friends from the confidence once so
freely given. She had n’t visited the Parish House sines
she had broken her engagement.
And all the while the spring that had n’t time for the
little concerns of mortals went secretly about her im-
mortal business of rejuvenation. The blue that had been
so timid and so tentative overspread the sky ; more robins
came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and Peter-
birds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is
so beautiful and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and not-
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hatches, and the darling busybody wren fussing about
her house-building in the corners of our piazzas. The
first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened flame-like
on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by
the gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her
own wedding-gown. The yellow jessamine was full of
waxy gold buds ; and long since those bold frontiersmen
of the year, the Judas-trees, had flaunted it in bravest
scarlet, and the slim-legged scouts of the pines showed
shoulder-straps and cockades of new gay green above
gallant brown leggings.
One brand new morning the Butterfly Man called me
aside and placed in my hands a letter. The American
Society of Natural History invited Mr. John Flint,
already a member of the Entomological Society of
France, a Fellow of the Entomological Society of Lon-
don, and a member of the greatest of Dutch and German
Associations, to speak before it and its guests, at a most
notable meeting to be held in the Society’s splendid
Museum in New York City. Not to mention two mere
ex-Presidents, some of the greatest scientific names of
the Americas were included in that list. And it was
before such as these that my Butterfly Man was to speak.
Behold me rocking on my toes !
The first effect of this invitation was to please me im-
mensely, I being a puffed-up old man and carnal-minded
at times; nor do I seem to improve with age. The
plaudits of the world, for anybody I admire and Ipve,
ring most sweetly in my foolish ears. Now the honors
he had gotten from abroad were fine and good in their
way, but this meant that the value of his work was rec-
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ognized and his position established in his own country,
in his own time.' It meant a widening of his horizon,
association with clever men and women, ennobling friend-
ships to broaden his life. A just measure of appreci-
ation from the worthwhile sweetens toil and encourages
genius. And yet — our eyes met, and mine had to ask
an old question.
“Would you better accept it!” I wondered.
“I can’t afford not to,” said he resolutely. “The
time ’s come for me to get out in the open, and I might
just as well face the music, and Do it Now. Risks t I
hardly think so. I never hunted in couples, remember
— I always went by my lonesome and got away with it.
Besides, who ’s remembering Slippy t Nobody. He ’s
drowned and dead and done with. But, however, and
nevertheless, and because, I shall go.”
Again we looked at each other; and his look was un-
troubled.
“The pipe-dreams I ’ve had about slipping back into
little old New York ! But if anybody had told me I ’d
go back like I ’m going, with the sort of folks waiting
for me that will be waiting now, I ’d have passed it up.
Well, you never can tell, can you t And in a way it ’s
funny — now isn’t it?”
“No, you never can tell,” said I, soberly. “But I do
not think it at all funny. Quite the contrary.” Sup-
pose, oh, suppose, that after all these years, when a well-
earned success •was in his grasp, it should happen —
I turned pale. He read my fear in my face and his
smile might have been borrowed from my mother’s
mouth.
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“Don’t you get cold feet, parson,” he counseled
kindly. “Be a sport! Besides, it ’s all in the Game,
you know.”
“Is it!”
“Sure!”
“And worth while, John!”
He laughed. “Believe me! It’s the worthwhilest
thing under the sun to sit in the Game, with a sport’s
interest in the hands dealt out, taking yours as it comes
to you, bluffing all you can when you ’ve got to, playing
your cards for all they ’re worth when it ’s your turn.
No reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boast-
ing how you did it when you win. There ’s nothing in
the whole universe so intensely and immensely worth
while as being you and alive, with yourself the whole
kitty and the sky your limit ! It ’s one great old Game,
and I ’m for thanking the Big Dealer that I’da whack
at playing it.” And his eyes snapped and his lean
brown face flushed.
“And you are really willing to-*to stake yourself now,
my son!”
“Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead
ringer for the real thing in a classy sport yourself!”
“My dear son — !”
My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his
red beard.
“Would you back down if this was your call! Why,
you ’re the sort that would tackle the biggest noise in
the ring, even if you knew you ’d be dragged out on your
pantry in the first half of the first round, if you thought
you ’d got holy orders to do it! If you saw me getting
jellyfish of the spine now, yon ’d curl up and die — r
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wouldn’t you, honest Injun!” His eyes crinkled and
he grinned so infectiously that my fears subsided. I
had an almost superstitious certainty that nothing really
evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the
human being who can meet them with the sword of a
smile.
“Well,” I admitted cautiously, “jellyfish of the spine
must be an unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of
it before.”
“You ’re willing for me to go, then!”
“You ’d go anyhow, would you not!”
“Forget it!” said he roughly. “If you think I ’d do
anything I knew would cause you uneasiness, you ’ve
got another think coming to you.”
“Oh, go, for heaven’s sake!” said I, sharply.
“All right. I ’ll go for heaven’s sake,” he agreed
cheerfully. “And now it ’s formally decided I ’m to go,
and talk, the question arises — what they really want me
to talk about! 1 don’t know how to deal in glittering
generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
generalities go by the board. The minute he tackles the
living Little People he chucks theories and bucks con-
ditions.
“Suppose I tell the truth as I see it: that most so-
called authorities are like cats chasing their tails — be-
cause they accept theories that have never been really
proven, run after them, and so never get anywhere!
And that facts dug up in the open under the sunlight
don’t always fit in with notions hatched out in libraries
under the electric light!
“Suppose I say that after they 've run everything
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down to that plasma they ’re so fond of beginning and
ending with, there is still something behind it all their
theories can’t explain away? Protoplasm doesn’t ex-
plain Life any more than the battery explains electricity.
Instinct? Evolution? The survival of the fittest?
Well, nothing is tagged for fair, and I ’m more than
willing to be shown. For the more I find out from
the living things themselves, — you can ’t get truth
from death, you ’ve got to get it from life — the more
self-evident it seems to me that to exist at all insects
must have arrived on the scene complete, handfinished,
with the union label of the Great Workshop on them by
way of a trade-mark.”
“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
one God, world without end, Amen!” said I, smiling.
I have never thought it necessary to explain or excuse
the Creator. God is ; things are.
But he shook his head, wrinkling his forehead pain-
fully. “I wish I knew,” said he, wistfully. “You ’re
satisfied to believe, but I have got to know. Oh, great
Power behind Things, I want to knowl I want to
know t”
Ah, but I also do most passionately wish to know!
If, however, the Insect has taught me anything in my
lifelong study of it, it is to recognize the Unknowable,
to know there is that which I cannot hope to know. But
if under the law of its world, so different from ours and
yet so alike because so inevitable, the Insect must move
in a fixed circle within which it is safe, a circle whose
very limitation preserves it from error and thus from
destruction, may not a like fixed circle beyond which we
may not penetrate preserve us, too ? Are these mountain
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peaks of the Unknowable, the Impassable, which encom-
pass the skyline of our humanity, these heights so mys-
terious and so unscalable, not rather bulwarks between
man’s pride and the abyss?
Something of this I said to the Butterfly Man, and he
nodded, but did not answer. He fell into a brown
study ; then plunged from the room without further look
or word and made for his own desk. I was not afraid
of what the Butterfly Man, fresh from little Appleboro’s
woods and fields, would have to say to the scholars and
scientists gathered to hear him !
Apparently he was not either, for after he had gotten
a few notes together he wisely turned the whole affair
over to that mysterious Self that does our work and
solves our problems for us. On the surface he. busied
himself with a paper setting forth the many reasons why
the County of Appleboro should appropriate adequate
funds for a common dipping vat, and hurried this to
Dabney, who was holding open a space in the Clarion
for it. Then there were new breeding cages to be made,
for the supply of eggs and cocoons on hand would re-
quire additional quarters, once they began to emerge.
By the Saturday he had finished all this ; and as I had
that afternoon free we spent some beautiful hours with
the microscope and slide mounts. I completed, too, the
long delayed drawings of some diurnal wasp-moths and:
their larvae. We worked until my mother interrupted
us with a summons to an early dinner, for Saturday
evening belongs to the confessional and I was shortly
due at the church.
I left Flint with Madame and Miss Sally Ruth, who
had run over after the neighborly Appleboro wont with
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a plate of fresh sponge-cake and a bowl of fragrant
costard. Mi« Sally Both is nothing if not generous,
but there are times when one could wish upon her the
affliction of dumbness. As I dipped into my cassock in
the study, I could hear her uplifted voice, a voice so
insistent and so penetrating that it can pierce closed
doors and come through a ceiling:
“I declare to goodness, I don’t know what to believe
any more ! She ’s got money enough in her own right,
hasn’t she? For heaven’s sake, then, why diould she
marry for more money? But you never really know
people, do you? Why, folks say — ”
I hurried out of the house and ran the diort distance
to the church. I wished I had n’t heard ; I wished Miss
Sally Both, good as she is, would sometimes hold her
tongue. She will set folks by the ears in heaven some of
these days if she doesn’t mend her ways before she gets
there.
It must have been all of ten o’clock when I got back
to the Parish House. Madame had retired; John Flint’s
rooms were dark. The night itself was dark, though in
between the clouds that a brisk wind pulleyhauled about
the skies, one saw many stars.
Too tired to sleep, I sat beside my window and
breathed the repose that lay like a benediction upon the
little city. I found myself praying ; for Mary Virginia,
whom I loved and over whom I was sorely troubled ; for
Laurence, even now walking such a road as I also once
had to travel with feet as young but no more steadfast ;
and then with a thankfulness too deep for words, I
thought a prayer for the Butterfly Man. So thinking
and so praying, with a glow in my heart because of him.
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I closed my window, and crept into bed and into sleep.
I awoke with a start. Somebody was in the room.
There was an urgent voice whispering my name, an
urgent hand upon me. A pocket light flashed, and in
its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.
“Get up!” said he in an intense whisper. “And
come. Come!”
“Why, what in the name of heaven — ”
“Don’t make a row!” he snarled, and brought his
face close. “Here — let me help you. Heaven, man,
how slow you are!” With furious haste he forced my
clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to
adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through
the dark hall, and down the stairs.
“Easy there — careful of that step!” he breathed in
my ear, guiding me.
“But what is the matter?” I whispered back impa-
tiently. I do not relish mystery and I detest being led
willynilly.
“In my rooms,” said he briefly, and hustled me across
the garden on the double run, I with my teeth chattering,
for I had been dragged out of my sleep, and the night
air was cold.
He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his
door, and pushed me inside. With the drawn shades and
the flickering firelight, the room was peaceful and pleas-
ant enough. Then Kerry caught my astonished gaze, for
the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and
when I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself. Sunk
into the chair, the Butterfly Man’s old g^ay overcoat
partly around her, was Mary Virginia.
At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head
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and regarded me. A great sigh welled from her bosom
and I could see her eyes dilate and her lips quiver.
“Padre, Padre!” Down went her head, and she began
to cry childishly, with sobs.
I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak. But
the other man’s face was the face of one crucified. I saw
his eyes, and something I had been all too blind to rushed
upon me overwhelmingly. This, then, was what had
driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its
indelible imprint upon him! He had hung upon his
cross and I had not known. Oh, Butterfly Man, I had
not known!
“She ’ll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now,
parson.” He was so perfectly unconscious of himself
that he had no idea he had just made mute confession.
He added, doubtfully: “She said she had to come to
Von, about something — I don’t know what. It ’s up to
you to find out — she ’s got to talk to you, parson.”
“But — I wanted to talk to you, Padre. That ’s why
I — ran away from home in the middle of the night.”
She sat suddenly erect. “I just couldn’t stand things,
any more — by myself — ”
Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud
jilt who had broken Laurence’s heart and maddened and
enslaved Inglesby. Here was only a piteous child with
eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad face and
drooping childish lips. And yet she was so dear and so
lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened
little nose, that one could have wept with her. The
Butterfly Man, with an intake of breath, stood up.
“I shall leave you with the Padre now,” he said
evenly, “to tell him what you wanted to tell him.
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Father, understand : there ’s something rotten wrong,
as I Ve been telling you all along. Now she ’s got to
tell yon what it is and all about it. Everything.
Whether she likes to or not, and no matter what it is,
she ’s got to tell you. You understand that, Mary Vir-
ginia t”
She fixed him with a glance that had in it something
hostile and oblique. Even with those dearest of women
whom I adore, there are moments when I have the im-
pression that they have, so to speak, their ears laid back
flat, and I experience what I may justly term cat-fear.
I felt it then.
“Oh, don’t have too much consideration for my feel-
ings, Mr. Flint!” said she, with that oblique and baf-
fling glance, and the smile Old Fitz once likened to the
Curve 'in the Cat’s Tail. “Indeed, why should you got
Why don’t you stay and find out why I wanted to run
to the Padre — to beg him to find some way to help me,
since I can’t fall like a plum into Mr. Inglesby’s hand
when Mr. Hunter shakes the Eustis family tree!”
His breath came whistlingly between his teeth.
“Parson! You heart” he slapped his leg with his
open palm. “Oh, I knew it, I knew it!” And he
turned upon her a kindling glance :
“I knew all along it was never in you to be anything
but true!” said the Butterfly Man.
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CHAPTER XVI
“TOi TOU WALK INTO MY PABLO*”
I T is impossible for me to pat down in her own words
what Mary Virginia told the Butterfly Man and
me. Also, I have had to All in gaps here and there,
supplying what was lacking, from my intimate knowl-
edge of the actors and from such chance words and hints
and bits of detail as came to me afterward. But what
I have added has been necessary, in order to do greater
justice to everybody concerned.
If it be true that the boy is father to the man, it is
even more tritely true that the girl is mother to the
woman, there being here less chance for change. So it
was with Mary Virginia. That gracious little girlhood
of hers, lived among the birds and bees and blossoms of
an old Carolina garden, had sent her into the Church
School with a settled and definite idealism as part of her
nature. Her creed was simple enough : The world she
knew was the best of all possible worlds, its men good,
its women better; and to be happy and loved one had
only to be good and loving.
The school did not disabuse her of this pleasing op-
timism. It was a very expensive school and could afford
to have optimisms of its own. For one thing, it had no
pupils poor enough to apply the acid test.
When Mary Virginia was seventeen, Mrs. Eustis per-
ceived with dismay that her child who had promised
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beauty was instead become angular, awkward, and self-
conscious; and promptly packed the unworldly one off
to spend a saving summer with a strenuously fashionable
cousin, a widow, of whom she herself was very fond.
She liked the idea of placing the gauche girl under so
vigorous and seasoned a wing as Estelle Baker’s. As
for Mrs. Baker herself, that gay and good-humored lady
laughed at the leggy and serious youngster and promptly
cook her education in hand along lines not laid down
in Church Schools.
Mrs. Baker was delighted with her own position — the
reasonably young, handsome, and wealthy widow of a
man she had been satisfied to marry and later to bury.
She had an unimpaired digestion and no illusions, a kind
heart, and the power of laughter. Naturally, she found
life interesting. A club-woman, an ultra-modernist,
vitally alive, she was fully abreast of her day. Her
small library skimmed the cream of the insurgents and
revolutionaries of genius ; and here the shy and reticent
schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh
upon her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no
slightest notion of playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought
that the sooner one was allowed to slough off the gauch-
eries of the Young Person, the better. She did not gauge
the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed
under the young girl’s simplicity.
The revolutionaries and the insurgent and free poets
didn’t trouble Mary Virginia very much. Although
she sensed that something was wrong with somebody
somewhere — hence these lyrical lamentations — she could
not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for
as yet she saw the world couleur de rose. Some one or
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two of the French and Germans pleased her; she fell into
long reveries over the Gael, who has the sound of the
sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a haunting
light, as of sunsets upon graves. But it was the Rus-
sians who electrified and dazzled her. When she
glimpsed with her eyes of a young girl those strange
souls simple as children’s and yet mosaiced with un-
imaginable and barbarous splendors, she stood blinking
and half blinded, awed, fascinated, and avid to know
more of that sky-scaling passion with which they burned.
And in that crucial moment she chanced upon the
“Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, ” so frank and so astound-
ing that it took her breath away and swept her off her
feet. She was stirred into a vague and trembling ex-
pectancy ; she had the sense of waiting for something to
happen. Life instantly became more colorful and more
wonderful than she had dreamed could be possible, and
she wished passionately to experience all these emotions,
so powerful and so poignant. The Russian’s morbid and
disease-bright genius acted upon her as with the force
and intensity of a new and potent toxin. She could not
lay the book aside, but carried it up to her room to be
pored and pondered over. She failed to understand
that, untried as she was, it was impossible for her to
understand it. Had the book come later, it had been
harmless enough ; but it came at a most critical moment
of that seething period when youth turns inward to
question the universe, and demands that the answer shall
be personal to itself. The first long ground-swell of
awakening emotion swept over her, sitting in the pleasant
chintz-hung room, with the Russian woman’s wild and
tameless heart beating through the book open upon her
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“WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” 305
knees. And these waves of emotion that at recurrent
intervals surge over the soul, come from the shores of a
farther country than any earthly seas have touched, and
recede to depths so profound that only the eyes of God
may follow their ebb and flow.
Mrs. Baker, however, saw nothing about which to give
herself any concern. If she perceived the girl intense
and preoccupied, she smiled indulgently — at Mary Vir-
ginia’s age one is apt to be like that, and one recovers
from that phase as one gets over mumps and measles.
Mrs. Baker did think it advisable, though, to subtly
detach the girl from books for awhile. She amused her-
self by allowing her wide-eyed glimpses of the larger life
of grown-ups, by way of arousing and initiation. Thus
it happened that one afternoon at the country-club,
where Mary Virginia, at the green-fruit stage, found her-
self playing gooseberry instead of golf, Mrs. Baker
sauntered up with a tall and very blonde man.
“Here,” said she gaily, indicating with a wave of her
hand her sulky-eyed young cousin, “is a marvel and a
wonder — a girl who accepts on faith everything and ev-
erybody! My dear Howard, in all probability she will
presently even believe in you!" With that she left them,
whisked off by a waiting golfer.
The man and the girl appraised each other. The man
saw young bread-and-butter with the raw sugar of beauty
sprinkled upon it promisingly. What the girl saw was
not so much a faultlessly groomed and handsome man
as the most beautiful person in the world. And sud-
denly she was aware that that for which she had been
waiting had come. Something divine and wonderful was
happening, and there was fire before her eyes and the
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noise of unloosed winds and great waters in her ears,
and her knees trembled and her heart fluttered. A vivid
red flamed into her pale cheeks, a soft and trembling
light suffused her blue eyes. That happens when the
sweet and virginal freshness of youth is brought face to
face with the bright shadow of love.
He drew her out of her shyness and made her laugh,
and after awhile, when there was dancing, he danced
with her. He did not behave to her as other men of
Estelle’s acquaintance had more than once behaved —
as though they bestowed the lordly honor of their society
upon her out of the sheer goodness of their hearts and
their desire to please Mrs. Baker. Mary Virginia was
uncompromising and stiff-necked enough then, and she
bored most of her cousin’s friends unconsciously. Now
this man, as much their superior as the sun is to farthing
dips, was exerting himself to please her. That was the
one thing Mary Virginia needed to arouse her.
Mrs. Baker admired Mr. Hunter for a grace of manner
almost Latin in its charm. If at times he puzzled her,
he at least never bored her or anybody else, and for this
she praised him in the gates. Her respect for him deep-
ened when she perceived that he never allowed himself
to be absorbed or monopolized.
The pleasant widow did not take him too seriously.
She only asked that he amuse and interest her. He did
both, to a superlative degree. That is why and how he
saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose naivete made
him smile, it was so absurdly sincere.
Mrs. Baker was glad enough to have Howard take her
charge off her hands occasionally. She thought contact
with this fine pagan an excellent thing for the girl who
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took herself so seriously. She was really fond of Mary
Virginia, but she must have found her hand-grenade
directness a bit disconcerting at times. She wanted the
child’s visit to be pleasant, and she considered it very
amiable of Howard to help her make it so. She had no
faintest notion of danger — to her Mary Virginia was
nothing but a child, a little girl one indulged with pickles
and pound-cake and the bliss of staying up later than
the usual bedtime. As for Hunter, his was the French
attitude toward the Young Person; she had heard him
say he preferred his flowers in full bloom and his fruit
ripe — one then knows what one is getting; one isn’t de-
ceived by canker in the closed bud and worm in the green
fruit. No, Howard wasn’t the sort that hankered for
verjuice.
None the less, although Mrs. Baker didn’t know it,
Mary Virginia was engaged to the godlike Howard when
she returned to school. It was to be a state secret until
after she was graduated, and in the meantime he was
to “make himself worthier of her love.” She hadn’t
any notion he could be improved upon, but it pleased
her to hear him say that. Humility in the superman is
the ultimate proof of perfection.
The maid who attended her room at school arranged
for the receipt of his letters and mailed Mary Virginia’s.
The maid was sentimental, and delighted to play a part
smacking of those dime novels she spoiled her brains
with.
The little schoolgirl who was in love with love, and
secretly betrothed to a man who had stepped alive out
of old knightly romance, walked in the Land of April
Rainbows and felt the whole joyous universe suffused
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with a delicious and quivering glow of light and sound
and scent. Surcharged with an emotion that she was
irresistibly urged to express, and unable to do so by word
of mouth, she was driven to the necessity of putting it
down on paper for him. And she put it down in the
burning words, the fiery phrases, of those anarchists of
art who had intoxicated and obsessed her.
Just a little later, — even a year later — and Mary Vir-
ginia could never have written those letters. But now,
very ignorant, very innocent, very impassioned, she ac-
complished a miracle. She was like one speaking an un-
known tongue, perfectly sure that the spirit moved her,
but quite unable to comprehend what it was that it
moved her to say.
When Mrs. Baker insisted that her young cousin
should come back to her for the Christmas holidays, the
girl was more than eager to go. Seeing him again only
deepened her infatuation.
That holiday visit was an unusually gay one, for Mrs.
Baker was really fond of Mary Virginia — the young
girl’s tenderness and simplicity touched the woman of
the world. She gave a farewell dance the night before
Mary Virginia was to return to school. It was an in-
formal affair, with enough college boys and girls to lend
it a junior air, but there was a goodly sprinkling of
grown-ups to deepen it, for the hostess said frankly that
she simply couldn’t stand the Very Young except in
broken doses and in bright spots.
Hunter, of course, was to be one of the grownups.
He had sent Mary Virginia the flowers she was to wear.
And she had a new dancing frock, quite the loveliest and
fluffiest and laciest she had ever worn.
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“WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” 809
He was somewhat late. And so engrossed with him
were all her thoughts, so eager was she to see him, that
she was a disappointing companion for anybody else.
She couldn’t talk to anybody else. She flitted in and
out of laughing groups like a blue-and-silver butterfly,
and finally managed to slip away to the stair nook be-
hind what Mrs. Baker liked to call the conservatory.
This was merely a portion of the big back hall glassed in
and hung with a yellow silk curtain ; it had a tiny round
crystal fountain in the center and one or two carved
seats, but one wouldn’t think so small a space could
hold so much bloom and fragrance. From the nook
where Mary Virginia sat, one could hear every word
spoken in the flower-room, though the hearer remained
hidden by the paneled stairway.
Hands in her lacy lap, eyes abstracted, she fell into
the dreams that youth dreams; in which a girl — one’s
self, say, — walks hand in hand through an enchanted
world with a being very, very little lower than the angels
and twice as dear. They are such innocent dreams, such
impossible dreams, so untouched of all reality; but I
wonder, oh I wonder, if life can ever give us anything
to repay their loss !
Somebody spoke in the conservatory and she looked
up, startled. Through a parting in the silk curtain she
glimpsed the woman and recognized one of Estelle’s
friends, handsome and fashionable, but a woman she had
never liked.
“You provoke me. You try my patience too much !”
she was saying, in a tone of suppressed anger. “People
are beginning to say that you have a serious affair with
that sugar-candy chit. I want to know if that is true?”
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The man laughed, a lazy, pleasant, disarming laugh.
She knew that laugh among a million, and her heart
began to beat, bat not with doubt or distrust. She won-
dered how she had missed him, and if he had been look-
ing for her; she thought of the exquisite secret that
bound them together, and wondered how he was going
to protect it without evasions or untruthfulness. And
she thought the woman abominable.
“You’re so suspicious, Evie!” he said smilingly.
“Why bother about what can give you no real concern?
Why discuss it here, at all? It ’s not the thing, really.”
The woman stamped her foot She had an able-bodied
temper.
“I will know, and I will know now. I have to know,”
said she, and her voice shook. Mary Virginia would have
coughed then, would have made her presence known had
she been able; but something held her silent. “Remem-
ber, you ’re not dealing with a love-sick school-girl now,
Howard : you are dealing with me. Have you made that
little fool think you ’re in love with her?”
“Why, and what then?” he asked coolly. “I like the
child. Of course she is without form and void as yet
but there ’s quite a lot to that girt”
“Oh, yes! Quite a lot!” said she, with sarcasm.
“That ’s what made me take notice. James Eustis’s
girl — and barrels of money. She ’ll be a catch. You
are clever, Howard ! But what of met”
Mary Virginia’s heart fluttered. Indeed, what of this
other woman?
“Oh, well, there ’s nothing definite yet, Evie,” said
he soothingly. A hint of impatience was betrayed in
his voice. Plainly, it irked him to be held up and ques-
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“WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” 811
tioned point-blank, at such a time and place. Just as
plainly, be wished to conciliate his jealous questioner.
* ‘ My dear girl, it would be all of two or three years before
the affair could be considered. Let well enough alone,
Evie. Let ’s talk about something else.”
“No. We will talk about this. You are offering me
a two or three years' reprieve, are you not? Well, and
thent”
“Well, and then suppose I do marry the little thing ,— *
if she has n’t changed her little mind?” said he, exasper-
ated into punishing her. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing
for me, remember, and she ’s temptingly easy to deal
with — that girl has more faith than the twelve apostles.
Heavens, Evie, don’t look like that! My dearest girl,
you don’t have to worry, anyhow. If your — er — im-
pediment hasn’t stood in my way, why should mine in
yours?”
He spoke with a half -impatient, half-playful reproach.
The woman uttered a little cry. To soothe and silence
her, he kissed her. It was very risky, of course, but then
the whole situation was risky, and he took his chance
like the bold player he was. . The girl crouching behind
the paneled wall clenched her hands in her lap, felt her
heart and brain on fire, and wondered why the sky did
not fall upon the world and blot it out.
When those two had left the conservatory and she
could command her trembling limbs and whip her senses
back into some semblance of order, she went upstairs
and got his letters. When she came downstairs again
he was standing in the hall, and he came forward eager,
smiling, tender, as if his heart welcomed her; as perhaps
it did, men having catholic hearts. She put her hand og
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his arm and whispered : 4 4 Come into the conservatory.”
The hall was quite empty. From drawing-room and
library and dining-room came the laughter and chatter
of many people. Then the music struck up a gay and
popular air. The lilt and swing of it made her giddy.
But the little flower-room was cool and sweet, and she
drew a breath of relief.
Hunter bent his fair head, but she pushed him away
with her hands against his chest. A horror of his beauty,
his deliberate fascination, the falseness of him, came over
her. For the first time she had been brought face to
face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the unpardon-
ing white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is un-
known and falsehood impossible. That such knowledge
should have come through him of all men made the thing
more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by the pale
tragedy of her aspect, Hunter stared, waiting for her to
speak.
“I was on the stairs. I heard you — and that woman,”
said she with the directness that was sometimes so ap-
palling. “And I know.” Her face turned burning red
before it paled again. She was ashamed for him with
the noble shame of the pure in heart.
His face, too, went red and white with rage and aston-
ishment. It was a damnable trap for a man to be caught
in, and he was furious with the two women who had
.pushed him into it — he could have beaten them both with
rods. Innocent as this girl was, he could not hope to
deceive her as to the real truth. She had heard too
much. But he thought he could manage her; women
were as wax in Hunter’s hands. To begin with, they
wanted to believe him.
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“WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” 813
“I hate to have to say it — but the lady is jealous,”
he said frankly enough, with a disarming smile; and
shrugged his shoulders, quite as if that simple statement
explained and excused everything.
“Oh, she need not be afraid — of me!” said the girl,
with white-hot scorn. “I ’d rather die by inches of
leprosy than belong to you now. You are clever, though.
And I was easy to deal with, wasn’t II And I cared
so much! I dare say it was really your hair and beard,
but I honestly thought you a sort of Archangel! Well,
you ’re not. You ’re not anything I thought you — not
good nor kind nor honorable nor truthful — not anything
but just a rather paltry sort of liar. You ’re not even
loyal to her. I think I could respect you more if you
were. But I am James Eustis’s girl — and that ’s my
salvation, Mr. Hunter. Please take your letters. You
will send me back mine to-morrow.”
He stroked his short gold beard. The color had come
back into his face and a new light flashed into his cold
blue eyes. He laughed. “Why, you game little angel !”
he said delightedly. “Gad, I never thought you had it
in you — never. I begin to adore you, Mary Virginia,
upon my soul I do ! Now listen to reason, my too-good
child, and don’t be so puritanical. You ’ve got to take
folks as they are and not as you ’d like them to be, you
know. Men are not angels, no, nor women, either. You
must learn to be charitable — a virtue very good people
seldom practice and never properly appreciate.” And
he added, leaning lower: “Mary Virginia! Give me
another chance . . . you won’t be sorry, Ladybird.”
But she stood unmoved, stonily silent, holding out the
letters. And when he still ignored this silent insistence,
she thrust them into his hands and left him.
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Mary Virginia was to go back to school the next night.
All day she waited for her letters. Instead came a note
and a huge bunch of violets. The note said he could n’t
allow those precious letters which meant so much to him
to pass even into her hands who had written them.
When he could summon up the courage, he would pres-
ently destroy them himself. And she had treated him
with great harshness, and wouldn’t she be a good little
girl and let him see her, if only for a few minutes, before
she went away t
Mary Virginia tore up the note and returned the
violets by way of answer.
When she returned to school, the superioress re-
gretted that she had been allowed to visit Mrs. Baker
again, because too much gaiety wasn’t good for her, and
she was falling off in her studies. The other girls said
she had lost all her looks, for in truth she was wan and
peaked and hollow-eyed. Seventeen suffers frightfully,
when it suffers at all. Eighteen enjoys -its blighted af-
fection, revels in its broken heart, would like to crochet
a black edging on its immortal soul, and wouldn’t ex-
change its secret sorrow for a public joy. Nineteen is
convalescent — pride would come to its rescue even if life
itself did not beguile it into being happy.
Mary Virginia got back her color and her appetite and
forgot to remember that her heart was incurably broken
and that she could never love again. She liked to think
her painful experience had made her very wise. Then
she went abroad, and her cure was complete. The result
of it all was that poise and pride which had so greatly
delighted the autocratic old kinswoman whose fiat had
set the last seal of social success upon her.
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“WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” 815
When one of life’s little jokes flung Hunter into Ap-
pleboro and she had to observe him with impartial and
less ingenuous eyes, she forgave the simple schoolgirl’s
natural mistake. He had not changed, and she perceived
his effect upon others older and wiser than herself. And
her pride chose neither to slight nor to ignore him now,
but rather to meet him casually, with indifference, as a
stranger in whom she was not at all interested.
Mr. Inglesby she did not take seriously. She did not
dream that a possible menace to herself lay in this stout
man whom she considered fatuous and absurd, when she
thought of him at all. That her mother should be com-
pletely taken in by his specious charity and his plausible
presentment of himself, did not surprise her. She was
inclined to smile scornfully and so dismiss him.
She underestimated Inglesby.
The very fact that there was such an obstacle in the
way as a young fellow with whom she fancied herself
in love only deepened Inglesby ’s passion for Mary Vir-
ginia. She was in her proper person all that he coveted
and groveled to. To possess her in addition to his own
wealth— what more could a man ask t Let Eustis become
senator, governor, president, anything he chose. But
let Inglesby have Mary Virginia by way of fair exchange.
Mr. Inglesby was well aware that Miss Eustis would
not for one moment consider him — unless she had to.
He proposed to so arrange affairs that die had to. Natu-
rally, he looked to his private secretary to help him bring
about this desirable end. And at this opportune mo-
ment fate played into his hands in a manner that left
Mr. Hunter’s assent a matter of course.
Mr. Hunter had very expensive tastes which his salary
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SLIPPY McGEE
was not always sufficient to cover. Wherefore, like many
another, he speculated. When he was lucky, it was easy
money ; bnt it was never enough. Of late he had not been
fortunate, and he found himself confronted by the high
cost of living as he chose to live. This annoyed him. So
when there came his way what appeared to be an abso-
lute certainly of not only recouping all his losses but of
making some real money as well. Hunter plunged, with
every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall
Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turn-
ings, and Mr. Hunter’s investments took a very wrong
turn. And this time it was not only all his own money
that had been lost. The bottom might have dropped out
of things then, except for Inglesby.
When Hunter had to tell him the truth the financier
listened with an unmoved face. Then he swung around
in his chair, lifted an eyebrow, grunted, and remarked
briefly: “Very unsafe thing to do, Hunter. Very.”
And shoved his personal check across the desk. Nobody
knew anything about it, except the head bookkeeper of
the bank.
Inglesby had no illusions, however. He understood
that to have in his power an immensely clever man who
knew as much about his private affairs as Hunter did,
was good business, to say the least. He simply invested
in Mr. Hunter’s brains and personality for his own im-
mediate ends, and he expected his brilliant and expensive
secretary to prove the worth of the investment.
Inglesby had not risen to his present heights by beat-
ing about the bush in his dealings with others. He had
seized Success by the windpipe and throttled it into
obedience, and he ruthlessly bent everything and every-
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“WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR” 317
body to his own purposes. The task he set before Hunter
now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous
passage into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind.
Let Hunter do that — no matter how — and the pilot’s fu-
ture was assured. Inglesby would be no niggardly re-
warder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and
Hunter must go down with it. Hunter was not left in
any doubt upon that score.
Brought face to face with the situation as it affected
his fortune and misfortune, Hunter must have had a
very bad half an hour. I am sure he had not dreamed
of such a contretemps, and he must have been startled
and amazed by the cold calculation and the raw fury of
passion he had to deal with. I do not think he relished
his task. His was the sort of conscience that would dis-
like such a course, not because it was dishonorable or im-
moral in itself, but because its details offended his fas-
tidiousness. I think he would have extricated himself
honorably if he could. It just happened that he
couldn’t.
Give a sufficient shock to a man’s pocket-nerve and
you electrify his brain-cells, which automatically receive
orders to work overtime. Hunter’s brain worked then
because it had to, self-preservation being the first law of
nature. And this service for Inglesby not only spelt
safety ; it meant the golden key to the heights, the power
to gratify those fine tastes which only a rich and able
man can afford. Inglesby had promised that, and he
had just had a fair example of what Inglesby ’s support
meant.
One must try to consider the case from Mr. Hunter’s
point of view. To refuse,Inglesby meant disaster. And
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SLIPPY McGEE
who was Laurence, who was Mary Virginia, that he
should quixotically wreck his prospects for them T Why
should he lose Inglesby’s goodwill or gain Inglesby’s
enmity for them or anybody else! Forced to choose.
Hunter made the only choice possible to him.
Vcb victisl
\
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CHAPTER XVII
€t — SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY — ”
N OW I am only an old priest and no business-
man, so of course I do not know just how
Hunter was set like a hound upon the track of
those circumstances that, properly manipulated, helped
him toward a solution of his problem — the getting of a
girl apparently as unreachable as Mary Virginia Eustis.
To start with, he had two assets, the first being Eustis
pride. Shrewdly working upon that, Hunter played
with skill and finesse.
When he was ready, it was easy enough to meet Miss
Eustis on the street of an afternoon. Although her
greeting was disconcertingly cold, he fell into step beside
her. And presently, in a low and intimate voice, he
began to quote certain phrases that rang in her aston-
ished ears with a sort of hateful familiarity.
A glance at her face made him smile. “I wonder,”
he questioned, 4 ‘if you have changed, dear puritan t
You are engaged to Mayne now, I hear. Very clever
chap, Mayne. The moving power behind your father, I
understand. And engaged to you! You ’re so intense
and interesting when you ’re in love that one is tempted
to envy Mayne. Do you write him letters, toot”
Mary Virginia’s level eyes regarded him with haughty
surprise. The situation was rather unbelievable.
319
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SLIPPY McGEE
“Miss Eustis — ” he paused to bow and smile to some
passing girls who plainly envied Mary Virginia, “Miss
Eustis, you must come to my office, say to-morrow after-
noon. We must have a heart-to-heart talk. I have some-
thing you will find it to your interest to discuss with me. ’ ’
She disdained to reply, to ask him to leave her; her
attitude did not even suggest that he should explain him-
self. Seeming to be perfectly content with this attitude,
he sauntered along beside her.
“Do you know,” he smiled, “that with you the art of
writing genuine love-letters amounts to a gift! I am
sure your father — and let ’s say Mayne — would be as-
tonished and delighted to read the ones I have. They
are unequaled. Human documents, heart-interest, deli-
cate and piquant sex-tang — the very sort of thing the
dear public devours. I told you once they meant a great
deal to me, remember! They ’re going to mean more.
Come about four, please.” He lifted his hat, bowed,
and was gone.
Mary Virginia went to his office at four o’clock the
next afternoon, as he had planned she should. She
wanted to know exactly what he meant, and she fancied
he meant to make her buy back the letters he claimed
not to have destroyed. The bare idea of anybody on
earth reading those insane vaporings sickened her.
Hunter’s manner subtly allowed her to understand
that he had known she would come, and this angered her
inexpressibly ; it gave him an advantage.
“Instead of wasting time in idle persiflage,” he said
when he had handed her a chair, “let ’s get right down
to brass tacks. You naturally desire to know why I kept
your letters! For one reason, because they are a bit of
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 821
real literature. However, I propose to return them now
— for a consideration.”
He leaned forward, idly d ramming on the polished
desk, and regarded her with a sort of impersonal specu-
lation. A little smile crept to his lip.
“The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges,
doesn’t itT” he mused aloud. Mary Virginia’s lips
curled.
“I do not follow you,” she said coldly. “I am not
even sure you have the letters — that is why I am here. I
must see them with my own eyes before I agree to
pay for them. That is what you expect me to do, is it
not?”
“Oh, I have them all right — that is very easily
proven,” said he, unruffled. “Now listen carefully,
please, while I explain the real reason for your presence
here this afternoon. Mr. Inglesby, for reasons of his
own, desires to don the senatorial toga; why not? Also,
even more vehemently, Mr. Inglesby desires to lead to
the altar Miss Mary Virginia Eustis: yourself, dear lady,
your charming self: again, why not? Who can blame
him for so natural and laudable an ambition?
“As to his ever persuading you to become Mrs. In-
glesby, without some — ah — moral suasion, why, you know
what his chance would be better than I do. As to his
persuading the state to send him to Washington, it would
have been a certainty, a sure thing, if our zealous young
friend Mayne hadn’t egged your father into the game.
How Mayne managed that, heaven knows, particularly
with your father’s affairs in the condition they are.
Now, Eustis is a fine man. Far too fine to be lost in the
shuffle at Washington, where he ’d be a condemned nui*
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SLIPPY McGEE
3*2
sance — just as he sometimes is here at home. Do you
begin to comprehend!”
“Why, no,” said she, blankly. “And I certainly fail
to see where my silly letters — ”
“Let me make it plainer. You and your silly letters
put the game into Mr. Inglesby’s hands, swing the bal-
ance in his favor. You pay met Heavens, no! We
pa y you — and a thumping price at that ! ’ ’
For a long moment they looked at each other.
“My dear Miss Eustis,” he put the tips of his fine
fingers together, bent forward over them, and favored
her with a white-toothed smile, “behold in me Mr. In-
glesby’s ambassador — the advocate of Cupid. Plainly, I
am authorized to offer you Mr. Inglesby’s heart, his hand,
and — his check-book. Let us suppose you agree to ac-
cept — no, don’t interrupt me yet, please. And keep your
seat, Miss Eustis. You may smile, but I would advise
you to consider very seriously what I am about to say to
you, and to realize once for all that Mr. Inglesby is in
dead earnest and prepared to go to considerable lengths.
Well, then, as I was about to say: suppose you agree to
accept his proposal! Being above all things a business
man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral
should be put up for what you have to offer — youth,
beauty, charm, health, culture, family name, desirable
and influential connections, social position of the highest
In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions, his absolute
devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your
father’s plans and interests. Observe the last, please;
it is highly important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis
want reform, progress, Demos-with-a-fuU-dinner-pail, all
the wearisome rest of that uplift stuff! Inglesby will
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M — SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 328
see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More yet:
if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will
get' behind that young man and boost him until he can
crow on the weathervane — when you are Mrs. Inglesby.
A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly expur-
gated. Come, Miss Eustis, that ’s fair enough. If you
refuse — well, it ’s up to you to make Eustis understand
that he must eliminate himself from politics — and look
out for himself,’ ’ he finished ominously.
Mary Virginia rose impetuously.
“I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do
you honestly think you can frighten a grown woman
into believing that a handful of silly letters could possi-
bly be worth all that! Well, you can’t. And — let me
remind you that blackmailing women isn’t smiled upon
in Carolina. A hint of this and you ’d be ostracized.”
“So would you. And why use such an extreme term
as blackmailing for what really is a very fair offer!” said
he, equably. “The letters are not the only arrows in my
quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more interested in
them than anything else just now, suppose we run over
a few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?”
He rose leisurely, opened the safe in a comer of the
room, took from the steel money-vault a package, and
Mary Virginia recognized her own writing. Always
keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to
lean forward and verify what he chose to read.
Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her
eyes. Good heavens, had she been as silly and as senti-
mental as all that? But as she listened to his smooth
remorseless voice, mortification merged into amazement
and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser
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SLIPPY McGEE
now, she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really
accomplished, and she realized that a fool can unwit-
tingly pull the universe about her ears.
She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were
confronted by an incredible something her dreaming self
had done. She knew enough of the world now to realize
how such letters would be received — with smiles intended
to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged shoul-
der. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could
ever hope to make anybody understand what she ad-
mitted she herself could n’t explain. For heaven’s sake,
what had she been trying to tell this man? She didn’t
know any more, except that it hadn’t been what these
letters seemed to reveal.
“Well!” said the lazy, pleasant voice, “don’t you
agree with me that it would have been barbarous to de-
stroy them? Wonderful, aren’t they? Who would
credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme
art ? A French court lady might have written them, in
a day when folks made a fine art of love and were n’t
afraid nor ashamed.”
“I must have been stark mad!” said she, twisting her
fingers. “How could I ever have done it? Oh, how?”
“Oh, we all have our moments of genius!” said he,
airily.
As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-
fashion the superfine quality of his linen, the perfection
of every detail of his appearance, the grace with which
he wore his clothes. His manner was gracious, even
courtly. Yet there was about him something so relentless
that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.
“If my father— or Mr. Mayne — knew this, you would
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 8*5
undoubtedly be shot!” said she, and her eyes flashed..
“Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I
am well aware that the Southern trigger-finger is none
too steady, where lovely woman is concerned,” he ad-
mitted, with a faint sneer. “But when one plays for
high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I
do get shot? That wouldn’t give you the letters: it
would simply hand them over to prosecuting attorneys
and the public press, and they ’d be damning with blood
upon them. No, I don’t think there ’ll be any fireworks
— just a sensible deal, in which everybody, benefits and
nobody loses.”
“The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible.”
“I don’t see why. Everything has its price and I ’m
offering you a pretty stiff one.”
“I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. In-
glesby? If "Why, he is impossible, perfectly impossi-
ble!”
“He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in
love with you — you amount to a grand passion with
Inglesby. Also, he has twenty millions.” He added
dryly: “You are hard to please.”
Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty
millions with a gesture of ineffable disdain.
“Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you
seriously, do you imagine my father would ever consent?
He would despise me. He would rather see me dead.”
“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. Nobody can afford to despise
a woman with twenty millions. It isn’t in human na-
ture. Particularly when you save Mr. James Eustis
himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very
least.”
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826 SLIPPY McGEE
For the moment she missed the significance of that
last remark.
“I repeat that I would rather be burned alive. I
despise the man!” said she, passionately.
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t.” His manner was a bit con-
temptuous. “And you ’d soon get used to him. Women
and cats are like that. They may squall and scratch &
bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them, and
presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensi-
ble creatures! You ’ll end by liking him very well.”
The girl ignored this Job’s comforting.
“What shall I say to my father!” she asked directly.
“Tell him you kept the foolish letters written you by an
ignorant child — and the price is either his or my selling
out to Mr. Inglesbyf”
“That is your lookout. You can’t expect us to let
your side whip us, hands down, can you t Mr. Inglesby
does not propose to submit tamely to everything His
face hardened, a glacial glint snapped into his eyes.
“Inglesby ’s no worse than anybody else would be that
had to hold down his job. He ’s got virtues, plenty of
solid good-citizen, church-member, father-of-a-family
virtues, little as you seem to realize it. Also, let me re-
peat — he has twenty millions. To buy up a handful of
letters for twenty million dollars looks to me about the
biggest price ever paid since the world began. Don’t be
a fool!”
“I refuse. I refuse absolutely and unconditionally.
I shall immediately send for my father — and for Mr.
Mayne — ”
“I give you credit for better sense,” said he, with a
razor-edged smile. “Eustis is honorable and Mayne is
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 88?
in love with you, and when you spring this they ’ll swear
they believe you: hut will theyt Do men ever believe
women, without the leaven of a little doubt? Speaking
as a man for men, I would n’t put them to the test. No,
dear lady, I hardly think you are going to be so silly*
Now let us pass on to something of greater moment than
the letters. Did you think I had nothing else to urge
upon you?”
“ What, more ?” said she, derisively. “I don’t think I
understand.”
“I am sure you don’t. Permit me, then, to enlighten
you.” He paused a moment, as if to reflect. Then, im-
pressively:
‘‘Hitherto, Miss Eustis, you have had the very button
on Fortune’s cap,” he told her. “Suppose, however,
that fickle goddess chose to whisk herself off bodily, and
left you — you , mind you! to face the ugly realities of
poverty, and poverty under a cloud?” And while she
stared at him blankly, he asked: “What do you know
of your father’s affairs?”
As a matter of fact she knew very little. But some-
thing in the deadly pleasantness of his voice, something
in his eyes, startled her.
“What do you mean, Mr. Hunter?”
“Ah, now we get down to bedrock: your father’s af-
fairs,” he said evenly. “Your father, Miss Eustis, is a
very remarkable man, a man with one idea. In other
words, a fanatic. Only a fanatic could accomplish what
Eustis has accomplished. His one idea is the very sound
old idea that people should remain on the land. He
starts in to show his people how to do it successfully.
Once started, the work grows like Jonah’s gourd. He
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.becomes a sort of rural white hope. So far, so good.
But reclamation work, experimenting, blooded stock, up-
to-the-minute machinery, labor-saving devices, chemicals,
high-priced experts, labor itself, all that calls for money,
plenty of money. Your father’s work grew to its monu-
mental proportions because he ’d gotten other men inter-
•ested in it — all sorts and conditions of men, but chiefly —
and here ’s at once his strength and weakness — farmers,
planters, small-town merchants and bankers. They
backed him with everything they had — and they have n’t
lost — yet.
“However, there are such things as bad seasons, labor
troubles, boll-weevil, canker, floods, war. He lost ship-
loads of cotton. He lost heavily on rice. Remember
those last floods? In some of his places they wiped the
work of years clean off the map. He had to begin all
over, and he had to do it on borrowed money; which in
lean and losing years is expensive. Floods may come
and crops may go, but interest on borrowed money goes
on forever. He mortgaged all he could mortgage, risked
everything he could risk, took every chance — and now
everything is at stake with him.
“Do you realize what it would mean if Eustis went
under? A smash to shake the state ! Consider, too, the
effect of failure upon the man himself! He can’t fail,
though — if Mr. Inglesby chooses to lend a hand. Now
do you begin to comprehend?”
In spite of her distrust, he impressed her profoundly.
He did not over-estimate her father’s passionate belief
in himself and the value of his work. If anything,
Hunter had slurred the immense influence Eustis exerted,
and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 889
the plain people who looked up to him with such un-
limited trust. They would not only lose their money;
they would lose something no money could pay for —
their faith.
“Oh, but that just simply couldn’t happen!” said
Mary Virginia, and her chin went up.
“It could very easily happen. It may happen
shortly, ’ ’ he contradicted politely. * ‘ Heavens, girl, don ’t
you know that the Eustis house is mortgaged to the roof,
that Rosemount Plantation is mortgaged from the front
fences to the back ditches? No, I suppose he wouldn’t
want his women-folks to know. He thinks he can tide
it over. They always believe they can tide it over, those
one-idea chaps. And he could, too, for he ’s a bom win-
ner, is Eustis. Give him time and a good season and
he ’d be up again, stronger than ever.” While he spoke
he was taking from a drawer a handful of papers, which
he spread out on the desk. She could see upon all of
them a bold clear “James Eustis.”
“One place mortgaged to prop up another, and that
in turn mortgaged to save a third. Like links in a chain.
Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, remem-
ber. And we ’ve got the links. Look at these, please.”
He laid before her two or three slips of paper. Mary
Virginia’s eyes asked for enlightenment.
“These,” explained Hunter, “are promissory notes.
You will see that some of them are about due — and the
amounts are considerable.”
“Oh! And he had to do that?”
‘ ‘ Of course. What else could he do ? We kept a very
close watch since we got the first inkling that things
were not breaking right for him. Mr. Inglesby’s own
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interests are pretty extensive — and we set them to work.
It wasn’t hard to manage, after things began to shape:
a word here, a hint there, an order somewhere else ; and
once or twice, of course, a bit of pressure was brought
to bear, in obdurate instances. But the man with money
is always the man with the whip hand. Eustis got the
help he had to have — and presently we got these. All
perfectly legitimate, all in the course of the day’s work.
“Now, promissory notes are dangerous instruments
should a holder desire to use them dangerously. Mr.
Inglesby could give Eustis an extension of time, or he
could demand full payment and immediately foreclose.
You see, it ’s entirely optional with Mr. Inglesby.” And
he leaned back in his chair, perfectly self-possessed, en-
tirely at his ease, and waited for her to speak.
“You could do that — anybody' could do that — to my
father?” she was only half-convinced.
“I assure you we can send him under — with a lot of
other men’s money tied around his neck to keep him
down.”
“But even you would hesitate to do a thing like that ! ’ ’
“All is fair,” said Hunter, “in love and war.”
“Fair?”
“Legitimate, then.”
“But if he is in Mr. Inglesby’s way and in his power
at the same time, why not remove him in the ordinary
course of business? Why drag in me and my letters?”
“Why? Because it ’s the letters that enable us to
reach you. My dear girl, Mr. Inglesby doesn’t really
give a hang whether Eustis sinks or swims. He ’d as
lief back him as not, for in the long run it ’s good busi-
ness to back a winner. But it ’s you he ’s playing for.
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and on that count all is fish that comes to his net. Now
do you begin to see?”
Mary Virginia began to see. She looked at the un-
ruffled man before her a bit wonderingly.
“And what do you get out of this?” she asked, unex-
pectedly. “Mr. Inglesby is to get me, I am to get his
money and a package of letters, my father is to get time
to save himself; well then, what do you get? The pleas-
ure of doing something wrong? Revenge?”
But Hunter looked at her with cold astonishment.
“You surprise me,” he said. “You talk as if you ’&
been going to see too many of those insufferable screen-
plays that make the proletariat sniffle and the intelligent
swear. I am merely a business man, Miss Eustis, and
attending to this particular affair for my employer is all
in the course of the day’s work. J — er — am not in a
position to refuse to obey orders or to be captious, par-
ticularly since Mr. Inglesby has agreed to double my
present salary. That in itself is no light inducement —
but I get more. I get Mr. Inglesby ’s personal backing,
which means an assured future to me ; as it will mean to
you and your father, if you have got the sense you were
bom with. This is business. Kindly omit melodrama
— crude, and not at all your style, really,” he finished,
critically.
“This is nothing short of villainy. And not at all
too crude for your style,” said Mary Virginia.
He laughed good-humoredly. “Bad temper is vastly
becoming to you,” he told her. “It gives you a mag-
nificent color.”
And at that Mary Virginia looked at him with eyes in
which the shadow of fear was deepening. Hard as nails*
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cold as ice, to him she was merely a means to an end.
He did not even hate her. The guillotine does not hate
those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it takes
off their heads once they get in the way of the descending
knife.
“I suggest, ” said Hunter, rising, “that you go home
now and think the matter over carefully. Weigh what
you and your father stand to gain against what you
stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate de-
cision. You shall have a reasonable time for consider-
ation/ J It was a threat and a command, thinly veiled.
All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter
over carefully; she turned and twisted it about and
about and saw it now from this angle and now from
that ; and the more she studied it in all its bearings the
worse it grew. There was no escape from it.
Suppose, although she knew she could never, never
hope to satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told
her father about those letters and the part they were to
be made play, now that his own affairs had reached a
crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that he must
shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself
from ruin. That ... to James Eustis!
Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as
Hunter had nonchalantly admitted might happen: what
then? But it is the woman in the case who always suf-
fers the most and the longest; it is the woman, always,
who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the
imagined evil, her pride was crucified.
What tortured her most was that they were actually
making her party to a wreck that could easily be averted.
Hunter had admitted that Eustis could weather the storm*
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 888
if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for him, then!
And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes.
How could she help him, she who was also snared?
And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She
dared not speak out openly to anybody, she dared not
flatly refuse Inglesby’s pretensions, for that would be to
invite the avalanche. What she proposed to herself was
to hold him off as long as she could. She would not be
definite until the last possible minute. Always there
was the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis
might be able to meet those notes when they fell due.
Let him do that, and she would then tell him everything.
But not now. He was bearing too much, without that
added burden.
It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it
affected herself and Laurence. Life without Laurence!
The bare thought of it tested her heart and showed her
how inalienably it belonged to him. But under all his
lovingness and his boyishness, Laurence had a sternness,
a ruggedness as adamantine as one of Cromwell’s Iron-
sides. With him to know would be to act. Well — he
mustn’t know. It terrified her to think of just what
might happen, if Laurence knew.
Under the circumstances there seemed but one course
open to her — to give up Laurence, and that without ex-
planations. For his own sake she had to keep silent —
just as Hunter had known she would. What Laurence
must think of her, even the loss of his affection and re-
spect, would be part of the price paid for having been a
fool.
In the most unobtrusive manner they kept in touch
with her. Hunter had so adroitly wirepulled, and so
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854
deftly softened and toned down Inglesby’s crudities, that
Mrs. Eusti8 had become the latter’s open champion.
Condescending and patronizing, she liked the importance
of lending a very rich man her social countenance. She
insisted thait he was misunderstood. Men of great for-
tunes are always misunderstood. Nobody considers it a
virtue to be charitable to the rich — they save all their
charity for the poor, who as often as not are undeserv-
ing, and are generally insanitary as well. Mrs. Eustis
thanked her heavenly Father ^he was a woman of larger
vision, and never thought ill of a man just because he
happened to be a millionaire. Millionaires have got souls,
she hoped? And hearts? Mrs. Eustis said she knew
Mr. Inglesby’s noble heart, my dear, whether others did
or not.
Compelled to apparently jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia
sank deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. A
terror of Inglesby’s power, as of something supernatural,
was growing upon her, a terror almost childish in its
intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by
the Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her
nursery.. She could barely conceal this terror, save that
an instinct warned her that to let him know she feared
him would be fatal. And she felt for him a physical
repulsion strong enough to be nauseating.
The fact that she disdained and perhaps even disliked
him and made no effort to conceal her feelings, did not
in the least ruffle his bland complacency nor affront his
pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby could hope
to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime,
and the haughtier she was the more she pleased him;
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 883
it added to his innate sense of power, and this in itself
endeared her to him inexpressibly.
But as the girl Still held out stubbornly, trying to
evade the final word that would force a climax disastrous
any way she viewed it, Inglesby ’s patience was exhausted.
He was determined to make her come to terms by the
word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that
her final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant
enough, but nevertheless one to which he meant to hold
her.
To make that final demand more impressive, Hunter
was not entrusted with the interview. Hunter may have
beep doubtful as to the wisdom of this, hut Inglesby
could no longer forego the delight of dealing with Mary
Virginia personally. On the Saturday pight, then, Mrs.
Eustis being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, massaged,
immaculate, shaven and shorn, called in person ; and not'
daring to refuse, Mary Virginia received him, wondering
if for her the end of the world had not come.
He made a mistake, for Mary Virginia had her back
against the wall, literally waiting for the Eustis roof to
fall. But he could not forego the pleasure of witnessing
her pride lower its crest to him. He did not relish a
go-between, even such a successful one as his secretary.
He had made up his mind that she should have until
to-morrow night, Sunday, to come to a decision — just
that long, and not another hour. He was not getting
younger; he wanted to marry, to found a great estab-
lishment as whose mistress Mary Virginia should shine.
And she was making him lose time.
What Inglesby succeeded in doing was to bring her
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terror to a head, and to dll her with a sick loathing of
him. Under the smooth protestations, the promises, the
threats veiled with hateful and oily smiles, the man him-
self was revealed: crude, brutal, dominant, ruthless, a
male animal bull-necked and arrogant, with small eyes,
wide nostrils, cruel moist lips, sensual fat white hands
she hated. And he was so sure of her ! Mary Virginia
found herself smarting under that horrible sureness.
Perfectly at his ease, inclined to be familiar and
jocose, he looked insolently about the lovely old room
that had never before held such a suitor for a daughter
of that house. Watching her with the complacent eyes
of an accepted lover, assuming odious airs of proprietor-
ship such as made one wish to throttle him, he was in no
hurry to go. It seemed to her that black and withering
years rolled over her head before he could bring himself
to rise to take his departure. Death could hardly be
colder to a mortal than she had been to this man all the
evening, and yet it had not disconcerted him in the least !
He stood for a moment regarding her with the eyes of
possession. ‘‘And to think that to-morrow night I shall
have the right to openly claim you as my promised
wife!” he exulted. “You can’t realize what it means
to a man to be able to say to the world that the most
beautiful woman in it is his!”
Directly in front of her hung the portrait of the
founder of the house in Carolina, the cavalier who had
fled to the new world when Charles Stuart’s head fell
in the old one. It was a fine and proud face, the eyes
frank and brave, the mouth firm and sweet. The girl
looked from it to George Inglesby’s, and found herself
unable to speak. But as she stood before him, tall and
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 837
proud and pale, the loveliness, the appealing charm of
her, went like a strong wine to the man’s head. With
a quick and fierce movement he seized her hand and
covered it with hot and hateful kisses.
At the touch of his lips cold horror seized her. She
dragged her hand free and waved him back with a splen-
did indignation. But Inglesby was out of hand ; he had
taken the bit between his teeth, and now he bolted.
“Do you think I ’m made of stone?” he bellowed, and
the mask slipped altogether. There was no hypocrisy
about Inglesby now; this was genuine. “Well, I ’m
not! I’ma man, a flesh-and-blood man, and I ’m crazy
for you — and you ’re mine I You ’re mine, and you
might just as well face the music and get acquainted
with me, first as last. Understand?
“I ’m not such a bad sort — what ’s thfe matter with
me, anyhow? Why ain’t I good enough for you or any
other woman ? Suppose I ’m not a young whippersnap-
per with his head full of nonsense and his pockets full
of nothing, can the best popinjay of them all do for you
what I can? Can any of ’em offer you what I can
offer? Let him try to; I ’ll raise his bid! .
“Here — don’t you stand + here staring at me as if I ’d
tried to slit your throat just because I ’ve kissed your
hand. Suppose I did? Why shouldn’t I kiss your
hand if I want to ? It ’s my hand, when all ’s said and
done, and I ’ll Mss it again if I feel like it. No, no,
beauty, I won’t, not if it ’s going to make you look at
me like that! Why, queen, I wouldn’t frighten you
for worlds! I love you too much to want to do any-
thing but please you. I ’d do anything, everything, just
to please you, to make you like me ! You ’ll believe that.
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won’t you?” And he held out his hands with a sup-
plicating and impassioned gesture.
“Why can’t we be friends! Try to be friends with
me, Mary Virginia ! You would, if you only knew how
much I love you. Why, I ’ve loved you ever since that
first day I saw you, after you ’d come back home. I was
going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were !
You had on a gray dress, and you wore violets, a big
bunch of them. I can smell them yet. God! It was
all up with me ! I was crazy about you from the start,
and it ’s been getting worse and worse . . . worse and
worse !
“You don’t know all I mean to do for you, beauty!
I ’m going to give you this little old world to play with.
Nothing ’s too good for you . Look at me ! I ’m not an
old man yet — I ’ve only just begun to make money for
you. Now be a little kind to me. You ’ve got to marry
me, you know. Look here: you kiss me good-night,
just once, of your own free will, and I swear you shall
have anything under the sky you ask me for. Do you
want a string of pearls that will make yours look like
a child’s playpretty? I ’ll hang a million dollars
around that white throat of yours !”
But there came into the girl’s eyes that which gave
him pause. They stood staring at each other; and
slowly the wine-dark flush faded from his face and left
him livid. Little dents came about his nose, and his
lips puckered as if the devil had pinched them together.
“No?” said he thickly, and his jaw hardened, and his
eyes narrowed under his square forehead. “No? You
won’t, eh ? Too fine and proud ? My lady, you ’ll learn
to kiss me when I tell you to, and glad enough of the
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" — SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 839
chance, before you and I finish with each other! Why,
you — I — Oh, good God! Why do you rouse the devil
in me, when I only want to be friends with you!”
But she, with a ghastly face, turned swiftly and with
her head held high walked out of the room, passed
through the wide hall, and ascended the stairs, without
even bidding him goodnight. Let him take his dis-
missal as he would — she could stand no more!
Once in her own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy
for the night. She had to be alone, and the colored
woman was an irrepressible magpie. Furiously she
scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his
touch. That he had dared ! Her teeth chattered. She
could barely save herself from screaming aloud. She
bathed her face, dashed some toilet water over herself,
and fell into a chair, limp and unnerved.
One day!
She was facing the end and she knew it. Because she
had to say No. She had never for one minute admitted
to herself the possibility of her own surrender. She
could give up Laurence, since she had to ; but she could
not accept Inglesby. Anything rather than that! At
the most, all she had hoped was to evade that final No
until the last moment, in order to give Eustis what poor
respite she could. Only her great love for him had en-
abled her to do that much. And it had not helped.
When she thought of the wreck that must come, she beat
her hands together, softly, in sheer misery. It was like
standing by and watching some splendid ship being
pounded to pieces on the rocks.
Only her innate bravery and her real and deep re-
ligious instinct saved her from altogether sinking into
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inertia and despair. She had to arouse herself. Other
women had faced situations equally as impossible and
unbearable as hers, and the best of them had not allowed
themselves to be whipped into tame and abject submis-
sion. Even at the worst they had snatched the great
chance to live their own lives in their own way. As for
her, surely there must be some way out of this snarl,
some immediate way that led to honorable freedom, even
without hope. But how and where was she to find any
way open to her, between now and to-morrow night?
On her dressing table, with a handful of trinkets upon
it, lay the tray that the Butterfly Man had sent her
when she was graduated. Chin in hands, Mary Vir-
ginia stared absently enough at the brightly colored
butterflies she had been told to remember were mes-
sengers bearing on their wings the love of the Parish
House people. Why — why — of course ! The Parish
House people! They had blamed her, because they
hadn't understood. But if she were to ask the Parish
House people for any help within their power, she could
be sure of receiving it without stint.
If she could get to the Parish HouSe without anybody
knowing where she was, Inglesby and Hunter would be
balked of that interview to-morrow night. The worst
was going to happen anyhow, but if she couldn't save
herself from anything else, at least she could save her-
self from facing them alone. To be able to do that, she
would go now, in the middle of the night, and tell the
Padre everything. Unnerved as she was, she couldn't
face the hours between now and to-morrow morning here,
by herself. She had to get to the Parish House.
It was then after eleven. Nancy having been dis-
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“—SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY—” 841
missed for the night, she had no fear of being inter-
rupted. She made her few preparations, switched off
the light, and sat down to wait until she could be sure
that all the servants were abed, and the streets deserted.
She felt as if she were a forlorn castaway upon a pin-
point of land, with immeasurable dark depths upon
either side.
The midnight express screeched and was gone. She
switched on the light for a last look about her pretty,
pleasant room. There was a snapshot of the Parish
House people upon her mantel, and she nodded to it,
gravely, before she once more plunged the room into
darkness.
Noiselessly she slipped downstairs and let herself out.
The midnight air was bitingly cold, but she did not feel
it. With one handsatchel holding all she thought she
could honestly lay claim to, Mary Virginia turned her
back upon the home that had sheltered her all her life,
but that would n’t be able to shelter its own people much
longer, because Inglesby was going to take it away from
them. It made her wince to think of him as master
under that roof. The old house deserved a happier fate.
At best the Parish House could be only a momentary
stopping-place. What lay beyond she didn’t know.
What her fate held further of evil she couldn’t guess.
But at least, she thought, it would be in her own hands.
It wasn’t. Unexpectedly and mercifully was it put
into the abler and stronger hands of the Butterfly Man.
Now, that night Flint had found himself unable to
work. He was unaccountably depressed. He couldn’t
read; even the Bible, opened at his favorite John, had n’t
any comfort for him. He shoved the book aside, snatched
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hat and overcoat, and fled to his refuge the healing out-
of-doors.
He trudged the country roads for awhile, then turned
toward town, intending to pass by the Eustis house. It
was n’t the first time he had passed the Eustis house at
night of late, and just to see it asleep in the midst of
its gardens steadied him and made him smile at the vague
fears he entertained.
He was almost up to the gate when a girl emerged
from it, and he stiffened in his tracks, for it was Mary
Virginia. A second later, and they stood face to face.
“Don’t be alarmed, it is I, Flint,’’ he said in his quiet
voice. And then he asked directly: “Why are you out
alone at this hourt Where are you goingf”
“To— to the Parish House,” she stammered. She was
greatly startled by his sudden appearance.
“Exactly,” said the Butterfly Man, with meaning,
and relieved her of her satchel. He asked no questions,
offered no comments ; but as quickly as he could he got
her to his own rooms, put Kerry on guard, and ran for
help.
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CHAPTER XVIII
ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW
M ARY VIRGINIA'S voice trailed into silence*
and she sank back into her chair, staring
somberly at the fire. Her face marked with
tears, the long braids of her hair over her shoulders, she
looked so like a sad and chidden child that the piteous*
ness of her would have moved and melted harder hearts
than ours.
The Butterfly Man had listened without an interrup-
tion. He sat leaning slightly forward, knees crossed,
the left arm folded to support the elbow of the right, and
his chin in his cupped right hand. His eyes had the
piercing clear direcjtness of an eagle's; they burned with
an unwavering pale flame. Shrewder far than I, he
saw the great advantage of knowing the worst, of at last
thoroughly understanding Hunter and Inglesby and the
motives which moved them. He had, too, a certain
tolerance. These two had merely acted according to
their lights ; he had not expected any more or less, there-
fore he was not surprised now into an undue con-
demnation.
But the fighting instinct rose rampant in me. My
hands are De Ranc6 hands, the hands of soldiers as well
as of priests, and they itched for a weapon, preferably
a sword. Horrified and astonished, suffocating with
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anger, I had no word at command to comfort this victim
of abominable conning. Indeed, what could I say;
what could I dot I looked helplessly at the Butterfly
Man, and the stronger man looked back at me, gravely
and impassively.
“But what is to be done!” I groaned.
He seemed to know, for he said at once :
“Call Madame. Tell her to bring some extra wraps.
I am going to take Mary Virginia home, and Madame will
go with us.”
“But why shouldn’t she stay here?”
“Because she ’d better be at home to-morrow morning,
parson. We ’re not supposed to know anything of her
affairs, and I ’d rather she didn’t appear at the Parish
House. Also, she needs sleep right now more than she
needs anything else, and one sleeps better in one’s own
bed. Madame will see that she goes to hers and stays
there.”
I was perfectly willing to commit the affair into John
Flint’s hands. But Mary Virginia demurred.
“No. I want to stay here ! I don’t want to go home.
Padre.”
Flint shook his head. “I ’m sorry,” he said mildly,
“but I ’m going to take you home.” He looked so in-
exorable that Mary Virginia shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I ’ll go,” said she. “What
difference does it make? I ’ll even go to bed — as I ’m
told.” And she added in a tone of indescribable bitter-
ness: “I have read that men lie down and sleep peace-
fully the night before they are hanged. Well, I sup-
pose they could: they hadn’t anything but death to face
on the morrow, but I — •” and she caught her breath.
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 845
“Why not take it for granted to-night that yon 11 he
looked after to-morrow?” suggested Flint. “Mary Vir-
ginia, nothing ’s ever so bad as it ’s going to be.”
“Oh, yes, 1 11 be looked after to-morrow!” said die,
bitingly. “Mr. Inglesby will see to that!” She cov-
ered her face with her hands.
“Oh, I don’t know!'’ The Butterfly Man shut his
mouth on the words like a knife. “Inglesby may think
he ’s going to, but somehow I think he won’t.”
“Ah!” said she scornfully. “Perhaps you ’ll be able
to stop him?”
“Perhaps,” he agreed. “If I don’t, somebody or
something else will. It ’s very unlucky to be too lucky
too long. You see, everybody ’s got to get what ’s com-
ing to them, and it generally comes hardest when they ’ve
tied themselves up to the notion they ’re It. Somehow
I fancy Mr. Inglesby ’s due to come considerable of a
cropper around about now.”
“Between now and to-morrow night?” she wondered,
with sad contempt.
“Why not? Anything can happen between a night
and a night.” He looked at her with shrewd appreci-
ation: “You have taken yourself so seriously,” said
he, “that you ’ve pretty nearly muddled yourself into
being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing
with when they tackled you. They could bet the limit
you ’d never tell. So long as you did n’t tell, so long as
they had nobody but you to deal with, they had you
where they wanted you. But now maybe things might
happen that have n’t been printed in the program.”
“What things?” she mocked somberly.
“I don’t know, yet,” he admitted. “But I do know
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SLIPPY McGEE
there is always a way oat of everything except the grave.
The thing is to find the right way. That ’s up to the
Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
Madame now, please t The sooner we go the better.”
Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of
women? I waked her in the small hours with the
startling information that Mary Virginia was downstairs
in John Flint’s workroom, and that she herself must
dress and accompany her home. And my mother,
though she looked her stark bewilderment, plagued me
with no questions.
“She is in great trouble, and she needs you. Hurry.”
Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly
folded garments.
“Wait in the hall, Armand ; I will be with you in ten
minutes.” And she was, wrapped and hatted.
Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching
woman-glance at the pale girl in the chair. Her face
was v so sweet with motherliness and love and pity, and
that profound comprehension the best women show to
each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered
into Madame ’s embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old
friend dumbly. Madame had but one question :
“My child, have you told John Flint and my son what
this trouble of yours is?”
“Yes ; I had to, I had to !”
“Thank the good God for that!” said my mother
piously. “Now we will go home, dearest, and you can
sleep in peace — you have nothing more to worry about !”
The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity
of the mild eyes, and above all the little lady’s perfect
confidence, aroused Mary Virginia opt of her torpor.
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 847
She felt that she no longer stood alone at the mercy of
the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had
provided, she paused at the door.
“I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause
you, because I am sure all of you love me. And what-
ever comes, I will be brave enough to face and to bear it.
Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don’t you?”
‘‘My child, my darling child, I understand.”
‘‘I ’ll be back in half an hour, parson,” the Butterfly
Man remarked meaningly. Then the three melted into
the night.
Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame ’s simple
faith in our ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I
knew now the temper of the men we had to deal with.
I also understood that in cases like this the Southern
trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain
point of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and
thorough killing, these two did. Yet this hjQjnicidal
specter turned me cold, for Mary Virginia’s sake.
For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead,
but I wished passionately to help the dear girl who had
come to me in her stress. But what was one to do?
How should one act?
I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my
breast; for as a plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am
a particularly hopeless failure. I have no sense of in-
trigue, and the bare idea of plotting reduces me to stupe-
faction.
Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always dis-
cover in myself the instant need of prayer when con-
fronted by the unusual and the difficult. I have prayed
over seemingly hopeless problems in my time and I think
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SLIPPY McGEE
I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I
bring desire and will to bear upon a given point and so
release an irresistible natural foree. He says prayer is
as much a science as, say, mathematics — such and such its
units, and such and such its fixed results. Well, maybe
so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think I
receive it.
So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt
that at least for a few minutes I must kneel before the
altar and implore help for her who was like my own
child to me.
The empty church was quite black save for the sanc-
tuary lamp and the little red votive lights burning before
the statues of the saints and of our Lady. All these
many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts of bright-
ness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed
by the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it
shone with a mild and pure luster, unfailing, calm,
steady, burning through the night, the sign and symbol
of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
bums and burns forever and forever before an altar that
is the infinite universe itself.
My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head
above the encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and
torment died away: . . . after the earthquake and the
fire and the whirlwind, the still small voice. . . .
Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and
waiting, was for a space able to pray for her to whomfiife
should be “as the light of the morning, when the sun
riseth, even a clear morning without clouds ; and as the
tender grass by clear shining after rain ” I remembered
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 349
her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill
my empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even
hold fast to the love of God but by these frail all-power-
ful ties of simple human affection. And when I thought
of her now, so young and so sore-beset, a bird caught in
the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity and
for grief. Oh, how should I help her, howt
I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon
his pedestal, the memorial lights dickering upon his long
robe, his smooth boy’s face, his shedf of lilies. I re-
garded him rather absently. Something stirred in
my consciousness ; something I always had to remember
in connection with St. Stanislaus. . . .
Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of
pictures — a mangled, tramp carried into the Parish
House, my mother watching with a concerned and
shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling
feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off,
turning over to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin
package they had found; I opening that package later
and standing amazed and startled before its contents;
and that same package, hidden under my cassock, car-
ried over to the church and placed for security and se-
crecy in the keeping of the little saint. Well, that had
been quite right ; there had been nothing else to do ; one
had to be secret and careful when one had in one’s keep-
ing the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.
Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures
with the fate of Mary Virginia Eustisl No, I did not
immediately grasp their ' tremendous bearing upon the
petitions I was repeating. And all the while, with a
dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered
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SLIPPY McGEE
before the eyes of my memory — the Poles, the screaming
cursing tramp; Westmoreland pondering aloud as to
why he had been permitted to save so apparently worth-
less a life; and the little saint hiding from the eyes of
men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more
curiously yet, did I connect them with the Butterfly
Man. The Butterfly Man was somebody else altogether,
another and a different person, a man of whom even one’s
secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He
was so far removed from the very shadow of such things
as these, that it did one’s conscience a sort of violence to
think of him in connection with them. I tried to dis-
miss the memories from my mind. I wished to concen-
trate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.
And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that
lives in us far, far beneath thought and instinct and con-
science and heredity and even consciousness itself, rose to
the surface with a message :
Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all
America. . . . “Honest to God, skypilot, I can open any
box made, easy as easy!” . . . And even as his tools
were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee himself
was hidden in John Flint.
Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful
thing was I contemplating, what fearful temptation was
assailing me, here under the light of the sanctuary lamp f
I looked reproachfully at St. Stanislaus, as if that
seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I suspected
him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous
trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-
leave. Perhaps he was secretly irked at the use to which
his painted semblance had been put, and seized this first
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 351
opportunity to extricate himself from a position in
which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate
to find himself.
I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work
he had accomplished, the splendid structure of that life
slowly and laboriously made over and lived so cleanly
in the light of day. Not only had that old evil person-
ality been sloughed off like a larval skin; he had come
forth from it another creature, a being lovable, wise,
tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy
that was becoming more and more a part of him
endeared him to others, for the broader and brighter the
light into which he was steadily mounting, the more
marked and touching was this softening shadow.
And I who had been the accoucheur of his genius, I
who had watched and prayed and ministered beside the
cradle of his growth, was I of all men to threaten his
overthrow! Alas, what madness was upon me that I
was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of
Slippy McGee?
There passed before me in procession the face of
Laurence with all its boyish bloom stripped from it and
the glory of its youth vanished; and the bowed and
humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and noble
souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary
Virginia, wistfully appealing; followed them the beau-
tiful ruthless face of Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-
haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes and heavy jowl
of Inglesby, brutally dominant ; and then the dear whim-
sical visage of the Butterfly Man himself. They passed ;
and I fell to praying, with a sort of still desperation,
for all of us.
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SLIPPY McGEE
And all the while the steady and rosy light of the
sanctuary lamp fell upon me, and the little lights flick-
ered before the silent saints. I took myself in hand,
forced myself into self-control. I did not minimize one
risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at
stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course :
“If he has thought of this himself, then I will help.
But if he has not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter
what happens."
I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and
I said them, with an Ourfather at the end. And with-
out further praying I got to my feet The church
seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus
and tipped him backward. He is a rather, heavy and
sizable boy for all his saintly slimness. Up in the hollow
inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the oilskin package he
had kept these long years through, waiting for to-night.
“If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for
the love of God, for all of us this night!” I told him.
And with the package in a fold of my cassock I went
back across the dark garden and let myself into the
Butterfly Man’s rooms, and was hardly inside the door
when he himself returned.
“Did n’t meet a soul. And they got in without wak-
ing anybody in the house,” said he complacently, rub-
bing his hands before the fire. “I waited until they
showed a light upstairs. She ’s all right, now Madame ’s
with her.”
“Have you — have you thought of anything 1 — any
way, John?” I quavered, and wondered if he heard my
heart dunting against my ribs.
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 858
“Why, I ’ve thought that she ’s got until to-morrow
night to come to terms,” said he, and turned to face me.
* ‘And she can’t accept them. Nobody could — that is,
not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might push
Eusti8 under, but he wouldn’t have been so cocksure of
her if it was n’t for those letters. She ’s been afraid of
I
what might happen if Eustis or Laurence found out about
them — somebody ran the risk of being put to bed with a
shovel. There 's where they had her. A bit unbearable
to think of, is n ’t it f ” He spoke so mildly that I looked
up with astonishment and some disappointment.
“Why,” said I, ruefully, “if that ’s as far as you ’ve
gone, we are still at the starting point.”
“No need to go farther and fare worse, parson,” said
he, equably. “I saw that the first minute I could see
anything but red. Yet do you know, when she was
telling us about it, I thought like a fool of everything
but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an auto-
matic t
“When I got my reason on straight, I went back to
the starting point — the letters, parson, the letter in the
safe in Hunter’s office. Given the letters she ’d be free
— the one thing Inglesby doesn’t want to happen.
We ’ve got to have those letters.”
My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him
through a blur.
“I don’t know,” he went on, “if you agree with me,
parson, but to my mind the best way to fight the devil
is with fire. What did you do with those tools!”
“Tools?” in a dry whisper. “Tools, John!”
“Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you
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SLIPPY McGEE
put your hand on them in a hurry to-night t Don’t
stare so, man I And for the Lord’s love don’t you tell
me you destroyed them! What did you do with my
toolst”
The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the
hair on my scalp, as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had
passed by. By way of reply I placed a heavy package
on the table before him, slumped into my chair, and
covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little
saint, what had we done between us to-night to the But-
terfly Manf
When I looked up again he had risen. With his
hands gripping the edge of the table until the knuckles
showed white, and his neck stretched out, he was staring
with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him. Wonder,
incredulity, a sort of ironic amusement, and a growing,
iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his
changing countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips
and swallowed. Then he sat down again, deliberately,
and fixed upon me a long and somewhat disconcerting
stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his esti-
mate of Father Armand Jean De Ranee. He took his
head in his hands, and with slitted eyes considered the
immediate course of action to which the possession of
that package committed him. One surmised that he was
weighing and providing for every possible contingency.
Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms upper-
most, and flexed them ; then, turning them, he laid them
flat upon the table and again spread out his fingers.
They were notable hands — shapely, supple, strong as
steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive
of touch as the antennae he was used to handling. They
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW S55
were even more capable than of old, because of the ex-
quisite work they had been trained to accomplish, work
to which only the most skilled lapidary’s is compar-
able. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward
him. Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and
ironic eyes to mine ; and I am sure I was by far the paler
and more shaken of the two.
* ‘They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus’ arm.”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “I was praying — when
you were gone.” Somehow, I did not find it easy to
explain to him. 4 ‘And ... I remembered. . . . And
I brought them with me ... so in case you also . . .
remembered — ” I could go no further. I broke into a
sort of groaning cry: “Oh, John, John! My son, my
son!”
“Steady!” said he. “Of course you remembered,
parson. It ’s the only way. Didn’t I tell her there ’s
always a way outt Well, here it is!” His funny,
twisted smile came to his lips ; it twisted the heart in my
breast. No thought of himself, of what this thing might
mean to him, seemed to cross his mind.
“I prayed,” said I, almost sobbing, “I prayed. And,
John, there stood St. Stanislaus — ” I stopped again,
choking.
He nodded, understanding^. He was methodically
spreading out the not unbeautiful instruments. And as
he picked them up one by one, handling them with his
strong and expert fingers and testing each with a hawk-
eyed scrutiny, a most curious and subtle change stole
over the Butterfly Man.
I felt as if I were witnessing the evocation of some-
thing superhuman. Horrified and fascinated, I saw;
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SLIPPY McGEE
what might be called the apotheosis of Slippy McGee,
so far above him was it, come back and subtly and
awfully blend with my scientist. It was as if two strong’
and powerful individualities had deliberately joined
forces to forge a more vital being than either, since the
training, knowledge, skill and intellect of both would be
his to command. If such a man as this ever stepped
over the deadline he would not be merely “the slickest
cracksman in America”; he would be one of the master
criminals of the earth. I fancy he must have felt this
intoxicating new access of power, for there emanated
from him something of a fierce and exalted delight. A
potentiality, as yet neither good nor evil, he suggested
a spiritual and physical dynamo.
He gave a tigerish purr of pleasure over the tools,
handling them with the fingers of the artist and admiring'
them with the eyes of the connoisseur. “The best I
could get. All made to order. Tested blue steel. I
never kicked at the price, and you wouldn’t believe me
if I told you what this layout eost in cold cash. But
they paid. Good stuff always pays in the long run. It
was lucky I winded the cops on that last job, or I ’d
have had to leave them. As it was, I just had time to
grab them up before I hit the trail for the skyline. They
don’t need anything but a little rubbing — a saint’s elbow
must be a snug berth. I wish I had some juice,
though.”
“ Juice?”
“Nitroglycerine,” very gently, as to a child. “It
does not make very much noise and it saves time when
you ’re in a hurry — as you generally are, in this busi-
ness,” he smiled at me quizzically. “Not that one can’t
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 857
get along without it.” The swift fingers paused for a
fraction of a second to give a steel drill an affectionate
pat. “I used to know one of the best ever, who never
used anything but a particular drill, a pet bit, and his
ear. Somebody snitched though, so the last I heard of
him he was doing a twenty-year stretch. Pity, too. He
was an artist in his line, that fellow. And his taste in
neckties I have never seen equaled.” The Butterfly
Man’s voice, evenly pitched and pleasantly modulated,
a cultivated voice, was quite casual.
He gathered his tools together and replaced them in
the old worn case. “Wonder if that safe is a side-
holt?” he mused. “Most likely. I dare say it ’s only
the average combination. A one-armed yegg could open
most of the boxes in this town with a tin button-hook.
Anyhow, it would have to be a new-laid lock I could n’t
open. If he ’s left the letters in the safe we ’re all right
— so here ’s hoping he has. I certainly don’t want to go
to his room unless I have to. Hunter ’s not the sort to
sit on his hands, and I ’m not feeling what you ’d call
real amiable.” -
A glance at his face, with little glinting devil-lights
shining far back in his eyes, set me to babbling :
“Oh, ho, no, no, no, that would never do ! God forbid
that you should go to his rooms! He must have left
them in the safe! He had to leave them in the safe!”
1 ‘ Sure he ’s left them in the safe : why should n’t he ? ”
he made light of my palpable fears. Slipping into his
gray overcoat, he pulled on his felt hat, thrust his hands
into his wellwom dogskin gloves, and picked up the
package. Nobody in the world ever looked less like a
criminal than this brown-faced, keen-eyed man with his
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SLIPPY McGEE
pleasant bearing. Why, this was John Flint, the kindly
bog-hunter all Appleboro loved, “that good and kind
and Christian man, our brother John Flint, sometimes
known as the Butterfly Man.”
“Now, don’t you worry any at all, parson,” he was
saying. “There ’s nothing to be afraid of. I ’ll take
care of myself, and I ’ll get those letters if they ’re in
existence. I ’ve got to get them. 'What else was I born
for, I ’d like to know 1”
The question caught me like a lash across the face.
“You were bom,” I said violently, “to win an hon-
ored name, to do a work of inestimable value. And you
are deliberately and quixotioally risking it, and I allow
you to risk it, because a girl’s happiness hangs in the
balance! If you are detected it means your own ruin,
for you could never explain away those tools. Yes!
You are facing possible rain and disgrace. You might
have to give up your work for years — have you consid-
ered that ? Oh, John Flint, stop a moment, and reflect !
There is nothing in this for you, John, nothing but dan-
ger. No, there *s nothing in it for you, except — ”
He held up his hand, with a gesture of dignity and
reproach.
“ — except that I get my big chance to step in and
save the girl I happen to love, from persecution and
wretchedness, if not worse,” said he simply. “If I can
do that, what the devil does it matter what happens to
met You talk about name and career! Man, man,
what could anything be worth to me if I had to know
ahe was unhappy!”
The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his
face into a shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 859
beautiful. And I had thought him casual, carelessly
accepting a risk!
“Parson,” he wondered, “didn’t you know t No, I
suppose it would n’t occur to anybody that a man of my
sort should love a girl of hers. But I do. I think I
did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a girl-
kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and
a face like a little new rose in the morning. Remember
her eyes, parson, how blue they were! And how she
looked at me, so friendly — me, mind you, as I was!
And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me
Kerry. ‘You ’re such a good man, Mr. Flint!’ says she,
and by God, she meant it ! Little Mary Virginia ! And
she got fast hold of something in me that was never
anybody’s but hers, that couldn’t ever belong to any-
body but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and
had the pick of the earth.
“It wasn’t until she came back, though, that I knew
I belonged to her who could never belong to me. If I
was dead at one end of the world and she dead at the
other, we could n’t be any farther apart than life has put
us two who can see and speak to each other every day !”
“And yet — ” he looked at me now and laughed boy-
ishly, “and yet it isn’t for Mayne, that she loves, it
isn’t for you, nor Eustis, nor any man but me alone to
help her, by being just what I am and what I have been !
Risks t Fail her? It I couldn’t fail her. I’ll get
those letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them
in the beam of his eye ! ” He turned to me with a sudden
white glare of ferocity that appalled me. “I could Mil
him with my hands,” said he, with a quiet cold deadli-
ness to chill one’s marrow, “and Inglesby after him, for
f
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SLIPPY McGEE
what they ’ve made her endure ! When I think of to*
night — that brute daring to touch her with his swine’s
mouth — I — I — ”
His face was convulsed; but after a moment’s fierce
struggle the disciplined spirit conquered.
“No, there ’s been enough trouble for her without
that, so they ’re safe from me, the both of them. I
wouldn’t do anything to imperil her happiness to save
my own life. She was bom to be happy — and she ’s
going to have her chance. l’U see to that, Mary Vir-
ginia!”
The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-
like before me. Next to the white heat of this lava-
flow of pure feeling, all other loves lavished upon Mary
Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed and
petty. Beside it Inglesby’s furious desire shrunk into
a loathsome thing, small and crawling; and my own af-
fection was only an old priest’s; and even the strong
and faithful love of Laurence appeared pale and boyish
in the light of this majestic passion which gave all and
in return asked only the right to serve and to save.
“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon
thine arm ; for love is strong as death . . .
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the
floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance
of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned
Trying desperately to cling to such rags and tatters
of common sense as I could lay hold upon :
“There is your duty to yourself,” I managed to say.
“Yes, yes, one owes a great duty to oneself and one’s
work, John. You are risking too much — name, friends,
honor, work, freedom. For God’s sake, John, do not
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 861
underestimate the danger. You have not had time to
consider it.”
‘‘Ho ! Listen to the parson preaching self-interest!”
he mocked. “He ’s a fine one to do that — at this hour
of his life!”
“I tell you you endanger everything,” I insisted. I
might bring that package, but at least he shouldn’t
rush upon the knife unwarned.
“I know that — I ’m no fool. And 7 tell you it ’s
worth while. To-night makes me and my whole life
worth while, the good and the bad of it together.
Risks! I ’ll take all that ’s coming. You stay here and "
say some prayers for me, parson, if it makes you fee}
any better. As for me, I ’m off.”
At that I lost my every last shred of commonplace
everyday sanity, and let myself swing without further
reserve into the wild current of the night.
“Oh, very well!” said I shrilly. “You will take
chances, you will run risks, heinf My friend, you do
not stir out of this house this night without me!” He
stared, as well he might, but I folded my arms and
stared back. Let him leave me, bent on such an errand!
I to sit at home idly, awaiting the issue, whatever it
might be !
, “I mean it, John Flint. I am going with you. Was
it not I, then, who saved those tools and had them ready
to your hand! Whatever happens to you now happens
to me as well. It is quite useless for you to argue, to
scowl, to grind the teeth, to swear like that. And it will
be dangerous to try to trick me: I am going!”
For he was protesting, violently and profanely. His
profanity was so sincere, so earnest, so heartfelt, that it
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SLIPPY McGEE
36 *
mounted into heights of real eloquence. Also, he did
everything but knock me down and lock me indoors.
“Whatever happens to yon happens to me,” I re-
peated doggedly, and I was not to be moved. I had a
hazy notion that somehow my being with him might pro-
tect him in case of any untoward happening, and min-
imize his risks.
I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on
my head, leaving my biretta on his bed; and I put on
his new dark overcoat over my cassock. Both the bor-
rowed garments were too big for me, the hat coming
down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands. I.
being as thin as a peeled willow-wand, and the clothes
hanging upon me as on a clothes-rack, I dare say I cut
a sad and ludicrous figure enough. Flint, standing
watching me with his burglarious bundle under his arm,
gave an irrepressible chuckle and his eyes crinkled.
“Parson,” said he solemnly, “I ’ve seen all sorts and
sizes and colors and conditions of crooks, up and down
the line, in my time and generation, but take it from me
you *re a libel and an outrage on the whole profession.
Why, you crazy he-angel, you ’d break their hearts just
to look at you!” And he grinned. At a moment like
that, he grinned, with a sort of gay and light-hearted
diablerie. They are a baffling and inexplicable folk, the
Irish. I suppose God loves the Irish because He
doesn’t really know how else to take them.
“It will break my own heart, and possibly my moth-
er’s and Mary Virginia’s will break to keep it company,
if anything evil happens to you this night,” said I,
severely. I was in no grinning humor, me.
He reached over and carefully buttoned, with one
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ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW 863
hand, the too-big collar about my throat. For a mo-
ment, with that odd, little-boy gesture of his, he held
on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his eyes
grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.
“When you get to heaven, parson, you ’ll keep them
all bui^y a hundred years and a day trying to cut and
make a suit of sky clothes big enough to fit your real
measure,” said he, irrelevantly. “You real thing in
holy sports, come on, since you ’ve got to!” With that
he blew out the light, and we stepped into the cold and
windy night. It was ten minutes after three.
Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a
happy night had I gone forth with the Butterfly Man
a-hunting for such as we might find of our chosen prey.
Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable than
the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I,
Armand De Ranee, priest and gentleman, walked forth
with Slippy McGee in those hours when deep sleep falls
upon the spirit of man, for to aid and encourage and
abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
than burglary.
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CHAPTER *~nr
THE I O U or SLIPPY HCQEE
T IE wind that precedes the dawn was blowing,
a freakish and impish wind though not a
vicious one. One might imagine it animated
by those sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old
Father of the church used to call the monkeys of God.
Every now and then a great deluge of piled-up clouds
broke into tossing billows and went rolling and tumbling
across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirl-
ing masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the
stars showed like pin-points. Such street lights as we
have being extinguished at midnight, the tree-shaded
sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the gardens that
edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque
silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent
houses all profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were
shadows, whose feet were soundless on the sandy side-
walks. We moved in the dark like travelers in the City
of Dreadful Night.
And so we came at last to the red-brick bank, ap-
proaching it by the long stretch of the McCall garden
which adjoins it. For years there have been battered
“For Sale” signs tacked onto its trees and fences, but
no one ever came nearer purchasing the McCall prop-
erty than asking the price. Folks say the McCalls be-
lieve that Appleboro is going to rival New York some
364
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THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE 365
of these days, and are holding their garden for sky-
scraper sites.
I was very grateful to the McCall estimate of Apple-
boro^ future, for the long stretch shadowed by their
overgrown shrubbery brought us to the door leading to
the upstair offices, without any possible danger of de-
tection.
The bank had been a stately old home before busi-
ness seized upon it, tore out its whole lower floors,
and converted it into a strong and commodious bank.
It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps
a light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens
regard as unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old
Man Jackson there employed as ni'fht watchman? Old
Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear before
Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all op-
portunity to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope
that “some smartybus crooks ’d try to git in my bank
some uh these hyuh nights — an’ I cert’nly hope to God
they 11 be Yankees, that ’s all.”
Somehow, they had n’t tried. Perhaps they had heard
of Old Man Jackson’s watchful waiting and knew he
wasn’t at all too proud to fight. His quarters was a
small room in the rear of the building, which he shared
with a huge gray tomcat named Mosby. With those two
on guard, Appleboro knew its bank was as impregnable
as Gibraltar. But as nobody could possibly gain en-
trance to the vaults from above, the upper portion of the
building, given over to offices, was of course quite un-
guarded.
One reached these upper offices by a long walled pas-
sageway to the left, where the sidewall of the bank ad-
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SLIPPY McGEE
joins the McCall garden. The door leading to this stair-
way is not flush with the street, but is set back some
feet ; this forms a small alcove, which the light flickering
through the bank’s barred windows does not quite reach.
John Flint stepped into this small cavern and I after
him. As if by magic the locked door opened, and we
moved noiselessly up the narrow stairs with tin signs
tacked on them. At the head of the flight we paused
while the flashlight gave us our bearings. Here a short
passage opens into the wide central hall. Inglesby’s
offices are to the left, with the windows opening upon the
tangled wilderness of the McCall place.
Bight in front of jis half a dozen sets of false teeth,
arranged in a homgi circle around a cigar-box full of
extracted molars suih as made one cringe, grinned bit-
ingly out of a glass case before the dentist’s office door.
The effect was of a lipless and ghastly laugh.
Before the next door a fatuously smiling pink-and-
white bust simpered out of the Beauty Parlor’s display-
case, a bust elaborately coiffured with pounds of yellow
hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair of
every sort and shade and length was clustered about
her, as if she were the presiding genius of some bar-
barian scalping-cult. Seen at that hour, in the pale
luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of lost teeth
and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression,
disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize
on hair and teeth, however, for Flint was stopping be-
fore a door the neat brass plate of which bore upon it:
Ur. Inglesby.
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THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE 867
Mr. Inglesby had a desk downstairs in the bank, in
the little pompous room marked “President’s Office,”
where at stated hours and times he presided grandly;
just as he had a big bare office at the mills, where he
was rather easy of access, willing to receive any one who
might chance to catch him in. But these rooms we were
entering without permission were the sanctum sanc-
torum, the center of that wide web whose filaments em-
braced and ensnared the state. It would be about as
easy to stroll casually into the Vatican for an informal
chat with the Holy Father, to walk unannounced into
the presence of the Dalai Lama, or to drop in neighborly
on the Tsar of all the Bussias, as to penetrate unasked
into these offices during the day.
We stepped upon the velvet square of carpet covering
the floor of what must have once been a very handsome
guest chamber and was now a very handsome private
office. One had to respect the simple and solid mag-
nificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-cov-
ered chairs, the big purposeful desk. Above the old-
fashioned marble mantel hung a life-sized portrait in
oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done his sitter
stem justice — one might call the result retribution ; and
one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely re-
vealing it was. There he sat, solid, successful, informed
with a sort of brutal egotism that never gives quarter.
In despite of a malevolent determination to look pleasant,
his smile was so much more of a threat than a promise
that one could wish for his own sake he had scowled
instead. He is a throaty man, is Inglesby; and this,
with an uncompromising squareness of forehead, a stiff-
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SLIPPY McGEE
ness of hair, and a hard hint of white in the eyes, lent
him a lowering likeness to an unpedigreed bulL
John Flint cast upon this charming likeness one brief
and pregnant glance.
“Regular old Durham shorthorn, isn’t het” he com-
mented in a low voice. “Wants to charge right out of
his frame and trample. Take a look at that nose, par-
son — like a double-barreled shotgun, for all the world!
Beautiful brute, Inglesby. Makes you think of that
minotaur sideshow they used to put over on the
Greeks.”
. In view of Laurence and of Mary Virginia, I saw the
resemblance.
Mr. Hunter’s office was less formal than Mr. Ingles-
by ’s, and furnished with an exact and critical taste
alien to Appleboro, where many a worthy citizen’s office
trappings consist of an alpaca coat, a chair and a pine
table, three or four fly-specked calendars and shabby
ledgers, and a box of sawdust. To these may sometimes
be added a pot of paste with a dead cockroach in it, or
a hound dog either scratching fleas or snapping at flies.
Here the square of carpet was brown as fallen pine-
needles in October, the walls were a soft tan, the ceiling
and woodwork ivory-toned. One saw between the win-
dows a bookcase filled with handsomely bound books,
and on top of it a few pieces of such old china as would
enrapture my mother. The white marble mantel held
one or two signed photographs in silver frames, a pair
of old candlesticks of quaint and pleasing design, and
a dull red pottery vase full of Japanese quince. There
were a few good pictures on the walls — a gay impudent
Detaille Lancer whose hardy face of a fighting French-
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THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE S69
man warmed one’s heart; some sketches signed with
notable American names ; and above the mantel a female
form clothed only in the ambient air, her long hair swept
back from her shoulders, and a pearl-colored dove alight-
ing upon her outstretched finger.
I suppose one might call the whole room beautiful, for
even the desk was of that perfection of simplicity whose
cost is as rubies. It was not, however, a womanish
room; there was no slightest hint of femininity in its
uncluttered, sane, forceful orderliness. It was rather
like Hunter himself — polished, perfect, with a note of
finality and of fitness upon it like a hall-mark. Nothing
out of keeping, nothing overdone. Even the red petal
fallen from the pottery vase on the white marble mantel
was a last note of perfection.
Flint glanced about him with the falcon-glance that
nothing escapes. For a moment the light stayed upon
the nude figure over the mantel — the one real nude in
all Appleboro, which cherishes family portraits of
rakehelly old colonials in wigs, chokers, and tight-fitting
smalls, and lolloping ladies with very low necks and six-
teen petticoats, but where scandalized church-goers have
been known to truss up a little plaster copy of the inane
Greek Slave iu a pocket-handkerchief, by way of needful
drapery.
“'What I want to know is, why a lady should have to
strip to the buff just to play with a pigeon!’’ breathed
John Flint, and his tone was captious.
It did not strike me as being to the last degree whim-
sical, improbable, altogether absurd, that such a man
should pause at such a time to comment upon art as he
thinks it isn’t. On the contrary it was a consistent
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SLIPPY McGEE
and coherent feature of that astounding nightmare in
which we figured. The absurd and the impossible al-
ways happen in dreams. I am sure that if the dove on
the woman’s finger had opened its painted bill and
spoken, say about the binomial theorem, or the Effect of
Too Much Culture upon Women’s Clubs, I should have
listened with equal gravity and the same abysmal ab-
sence of surprise. I pattered platitudinously :
“The greatest of the Greeks ‘considered the body di-
vine in itself, my son, and so their noblest art was nude.
Some moderns have thought there is no real art that is
not nude. Truth itself is naked.”
“Aha!” said my son, darkly. “I see! You take off
your pants when you go out to feed your chickens, say,
and you ’re not bughouse. You ’re art. Well, if Truth
is naked, thank God the rest of us are liars !”
What I have here set down was but the matter of a
moment. Flint brushed it aside like a cobweb and set
briskly about his real business. Over in the recess next
to the fireplace was the safe, and before this he knelt.
“Hold the light!” he ordered in a curt whisper.
“There — like that. Steady now.” My hand closed as
well upon the rosary I carried, and I clung to the beads
as the shipwrecked cling to a spar. The familiar feel of
them comforted me.
I do not know to this day the make of that safe, nor
its actual strength, and I have always avoided question-
ing John Flint about it. I do know it seemed incredibly
strong, big, heavy, ungetatable. There was a dark-col-
ored linen cover on top of it, embroidered with yellow
marguerites and their stiff green leaves. And there was
a brass fern-jar with claw feet, and rings on the sides
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THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE 871
that somehow made me think of fetters upon men’s
Wrists.
“A little lower — to the left. So!” he ordered, and
with steady fingers I obeyed. He stood out sharply in
the clear oval — the “cleverest crook in all America” at
work again, absorbed in his task, expert, a mind-force
pitting itself against inanimate opposition. He was
smiling.
The tools lay beside him and quite by instinct his hand
reached out for anything it needed. I think he could
have done his work blindfolded. Once I saw him lay
his ear against the door, and I thought I heard a faint
clicks A gnawing rat might have made something like
the noise of the drill biting its way. With this excep-
tion an appalling silence hung over the room. I could
hardly breathe in it. I gripped the rosary and told it,
bead after bead.
“Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our
death — ”
There are moments when time loses its power and
ceases to be ; before our hour we seem to have stepped
out of it and into eternity, in which time does not
exist, and wherein there can be no relation of time be-
tween events. They stand still, or they stretch to indefi-
nite and incredible lengths — all, all outside of time,
which has no power upon them. So it was now. Every
fraction of every second of every minute lengthened into
centuries, eternities passed between minutes. The
hashish-eater knows something of this terror of time, and
I seemed to have eaten hashish that night.
I could still see him crouching before the safe; and
all the while the eternities stretched and stretched on
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SLIPPY McGEE
either side of ns, infinities I could only partly bridge
over with Hailmarys and Ourfathers.
“And lead us not into temptation . . . but deliver
us from evil . .
Although I watched him attentively, being indeed un-
able to tear my eyes away from him, and although I
held the light for him with such a steady hand, I really
do not know what he did, nor how he forced that safe.
I understand it took him a fraction over fourteen min-
utes.
“Here she comes!” he breathed, and the heavy door
was open, revealing the usual interior, with ledgers, and
a fairsized steel money-vault, which also came open a
moment later. Flint glanced over the contents, and
singled out from other papers two packages of letters
held together by stout elastic bands, and with pencil
notations on the comer of each envelope, showing the
dates. He ran over both, held up the smaller of the
two, and I saw, with a grasp of inexpressible relief, the
handwriting of Mary Virginia.
He locked the vault, shut the heavy door of the rifled
safe, and began to gather his tools together.
“You have forgotten to put the other packages back,”
I reminded him. I was in a raging fever of impatience
to be gone, to fly with the priceless packet in my
hand.
“No, I ’m not forgetting. I saw a couple of the names
on the envelopes and I rather think these letters will be
a whole heap interesting to look over,” said he, imper-
turbably. “It ’s a hunch, parson, and I ’ve gotten in
the habit of paying attention to hunches. I ’ll risk it
on these, anyhow. They ’re in suspicious company and
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THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE 37S
I ’d like to know why.” And he thrust the package into
the crook of his arm, along with the tools.
The light was carefully flashed over every inch of the
space we had traversed, to make sure that no slightest
trace of our presence was left. As we walked through
Inglesby’s office John Flint ironically saluted the life-
like portrait :
“You ’ve had a ring twisted in your nose for once, old
sport!” said he, and led me into the dark hall. We
moved and the same exquisite caution we had exercised
upon entering, for we couldn’t afford to have Dan Jack-
son’s keen old ears detect footfalls overhead at that hour
of the morning. Now we were at the foot of the long
stairs, and Flint had soundlessly opened and closed the
last door between us and freedom. And now we were
once more in the open air, under the blessed shadow of
the McCall trees, and walking close to their old weather-
beaten fence. The light was still shining in the bank,
and I knew that that redoubtable old rebel of a watch-
man was peacefully sleeping with his gray guerilla of
a marauding cat beside him. He could afford to sleep
in peace. He had not failed in his trust, for the in-
truders had no designs upon the bank’s gold. Ques-
tioned, he could stoutly swear that nobody had entered
the building. In proof, were not all doors locked f Who
should break into a man’s office and rob his safe just to
get a package of love-letters — if Inglesby made com-
plaint f
I remember we stood leaning against the McCall fence
for a few minutes, for my strength had of a sudden
failed, my head spun like a top, and my legs wavered
under me.
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SLIPPY McGEE
“Buck up!” said Flint’s voice in my ear. “It 's all
over, and the baby ’s named for his Poppa 1“ His arm
went about me, an arm like a steel bar. Half led, half
carried, I went staggering on beside him like a drunken
man, clutching a rosary and a packet of love-letters.
The streets were still dark and deserted, the whole
town slept. But over in the east, when one glimpsed the
skies above the trees, a nebulous gray was stealing upon
the darkness; and the morning star blazed magnificently,
in a space that seemed to have been cleared for it.
Somewhere, far off, an ambitious rooster crowed to make
the sun rise.
It took us a long time to reach home. It was all of a
quarter past four when we turned into the Parish House
gate, cut across the garden, and reached Flint’s rooms.
Faint, trembling in every limb, I fell into a chair, and
through a mist saw him kneel and blow upon the coals
of the expiring fire, upon which he dropped a lightwood
knot. A ruddy glow went dancing up the chimney.
Then he was beside me again. Very gently he removed
hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully
in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own
old biretta on my head; and there was no longer that
thin buzzing, shrill and torturing as a mosquito’s, sing-
ing in my ears. At my knee stood Kerry, with his beau-
tiful hazel eyes full of a grave concern ; and beside him,
calm and kind and matter-of-fact, the Butterfly Man
himself stood watching me with an equal regard. I
rubbed my forehead. The incredible had happened, and
like all incredible things it had been almost ridiculously
simple and easy of accomplishment. Here we were, we
two, priest and naturalist, in our own workroom, with
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THE I O U OP SLIPPY McGEE 875
an old dog wagging his tail beside ns. Could anything
be more commonplace? The last trace of nightmare
vanished, as smoke dispelled by the wind. If Mary Vir-
ginia’s letters had not been within reach of my hand I
would have sworn I was just awake out of a dream of
that past hour.
“She has escaped from them, they cannot touch her,
she is free!” I exulted. “John, John, yon have saved
our girl! No matter what they do to Eustis they can’t
drag her into the quicksands now.”
But he went walking up and down, shoulders squared,
face uplifted. One might think that after such a night
he would have been humanly tired, but he had clean for-
gotten his body. His eyes shone as with a flame lit from
inward, and I think there was on him what the Irish
people call the AisUng, the waking vision. For pres-
ently he began to speak, as to Somebody very near him.
“Oh, Lord God!’’ said the Butterfly Man, with a rev-
erent and fierce joy, “she ’s going to have her happiness
now, and it wasn’t holy priest nor fine gentleman yon
picked out to help her toward it — it was me, Slippy
McGee, bom in the streets and bred in the gutter, with
the devil knows who for his daddy and a name that ’s
none of his own! For that I ’m Yours for keeps:
You ’ve got me.
“You ’ve done all even God Almighty can do, given
me more than I ever could have asked You for — and now
it ’s up to me to make good — and I ’ll do it!’’
There came to listening me something of the emotion
I experienced when I said my first Mass— as if I
had been brought so dose to our Father that I could
have put out my hand and touched Him. Ah! I had,
/
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SLIPPY McGEE
had a very small part to play in this man’s redemption.
I knew it now, and felt humbled and abashed, and yet
grateful that even so much had been allowed me. Not
I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw into
a great scientist and a greater lover. And I remembered/
Mary Virginia’s childish hand putting into his the gray-
winged Catocala, and how the little moth, raising the sad-
colored wings worn to suit his surroundings, revealed
beneath that disfiguring and disguising cloak the ex-
quisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.
He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at
me a bit shyly.
“Parson — you see how it is with me!”
“I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and
you the finer gentleman,” said I stoutly. “It would
honor her, if she were ten times what she is — and she is
Mary Virginia.”
“She is Mary Virginia,” said the Butterfly Man, “and
I am — what I am. Yet somehow I feel sure I can care
for her, that I can go right on caring for her to the end
of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to me.” And
after a pause, he added, deliberately :
“I found something better than a package of letters
to-night, parson. I found — Me.”
For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, spec-
ulatively:
“Folks give all sorts of things to the church — dedi-
cate them in gratitude for favors they fancy they ’ve
received, don’t they! Lamps, and models of shipsf, and
glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands, and crutches
and 'braces, and that sort of plunder! Well, I ’m moved
to make a free-will offering myself. I ’m going to give
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THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE 377
the church my kit, and you can take it from me the old
Lady will never get her clamps on another set like that
until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning. Parson,
I want you to put those tools back where you had them,
for I shall never touch them again. I could n’t. They
— well, they Ye sort of holy from now on. They Ye my
I 0 U. Will you do it for me?”
“Yes!” said I.
“I might have known you would!” said he, smiling.
“Just one more favor, parson — may I put her letters
in her hands, myself ? ’ 9
“My son, my son, who but you should do that?” I
pushed the package across the table.
“Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o’clock,
and you ’ve been up all night!” he exclaimed, anxiously.
“Here — no more gassing. You come lie down on my bed
and snooze a bit. 1 11 call you in plenty of time for
mass.”
I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden
to the Parish House. I suffered myself to be put to bed
like a child, and had my reward by falling almost im-
mediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I stir until he
called me, a couple of hours later. He himself had not
slept, but had employed the time in going through the
letters open on his table. He pointed to them now, with
a grim smile.
“Parson!” said he, and his eyes glittered. “Do you
know what we Ve stumbled upon ? Dynamite ! Man,
anybody holding that bunch of mail could blow this state
wide open! So much for a hunch, you see!”
“You mean — ”
“I mean I Ve got the cream off Inglesby’s most pri-
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SLIPPY McGEE
vate deals, that ’s what I mean ! I mean I could send
him and plenty of his pals to the pen. Everybody ’s
been saying for years that there hasn’t been a rotten
deal pulled off that he did n’t boss and get away with it.
But nobody could prove it. He ’s had the men higher-up
eating out of his hand — sort of you pat my-head and 1 11
pat yours arrangement — and here ’s the proof, in black
and white. Don’t you understand} Here ’s the proof:
these get him with the goods !
“These,” he slapped a letter, “would make any Grand
Jury throw fits, make every newspaper in the state break
out into headlines like a kid with measles, and blow the
lid off things in general — if they got out.
“Inglesby ’s going to shove Eustis under, is het Not
by a jugfull. He ’s going to play he ’s a patent life-pre-
server. He ’s going to be that good Samaritan he ’s been
shamming. Talk about poetic justice — this will be like
wearing shoes three sizes too small for him, with a bunion
on every toe!” And when I looked at him doubtfully,
he laughed.
“You can’t see how it’s going to be managed?
Did n’t you ever hear of the grapevine telegraph ? Well
then, dear George receives a grapevine wireless bright
and early to-morrow morning. A word to the wise is
sufficient.”
“He will employ detectives,” said I, uneasily.
The Butterfly Man looked at me quizzically.
an eagle eye and a walrus mustache,” said he,
grinning. “Sure. But if the plainclothes nose around,
are they going to sherlock the parish priest and the town
bughunter? We haven’t got any interest in Mr.
Inglesby ’s private correspondence, have we? Suppose
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Miss Eustis’s letters are returned to her, what does that
prove f Why, nothing at all, — except that it was n’t her
correspondence the fellows that cracked that safe were
after. We should worry!
“Say, though, don’t you wish you could see them when
they stroll down to those beautiful offices and go for to
open that nice burglar-proof safe with the little brass
' flower-pot on top of it f What a joke ! Holy whiskered
black cats, what a joke!’’
“I ’m afraid Mr. Inglesby’s sense of humor isn’t his
strong point,” said I. “Not that I have any sympathy
for him. I think he is getting only what he deserves.”
“ Alexander the coppersmith wrought me much evil.
May Ood requite him according to his works! ” mur-
mured Hie Butterfly Man, piously, and chuckled.
“Don’t worry, parson — Alexander ’s due to fall sick
with the pip to-day or to-morrow. What do you bet he
don’t get it so bad he ’ll have to pull up all his pretty
plans by the roots, leave Mr. Hunter in charge, and go
off somewhere to take mudbaths for his liver f Believe
me, he ’ll need them! Why, the man won’t be able to
breathe easy any more — he ’ll be expecting one in the
solar plexus any minute, not knowing any more than
Adam’s cat who ’s to hand it to him. He can’t tell who
to trust and who to suspect. If you want to know just
how hard Alexander ’s going to be requited according
to his works, take a look at these.” He pointed to the
letters.
I did take a look, and I admit I was frightened. It
seemed to me highly unsafe for plain folks like us to
know such things about such people. I was amazed to
the point of stupefaction at the corruption those corq.
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munications betrayed, the shameless and sordid disre-
gard of law and decency, the brutal and cynical indiffer-
ence to public welfare. At sight of some of the
signatures my head swam — I felt saddened, disillusioned,
almost in despair for humanity. I suppose Inglesby had
thought it wiser to preserve these letters — possibly for
his own safety; but no wonder he had locked them up!
I looked at the Butterfly Man openmouthed.
“You wouldn’t think folks wearing such names could
be that rotten, would you! Some of them pillars of
the church, too, and married to good women, and the
fathers of nice kids! Why, I have known crooks that
the police of a dozen states were after, that wouldn’t
have been caught dead on jobs like some of these.
Inglesby won’t know it, but he ought to thank his stars
we ’ve got his letters instead of the State Attorney, for
I shan’t use them unless I have to. . . . Parson, you re-
member a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and
what Laurence said when I wanted to wring the little
crook’s neck! That the thing isn’t to reform the jay
but to keep him from doing it again! That ’s the cue.”
He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat
package of them, and put it in a table drawer behind a
stack of note-books. And then he reached over and
touched the other package, the letters written in Mary
Virginia’s girlish hand.
“Here ’s her happiness — long, long years of it ahead
of her,” he said soberly. “As for you, you take back
those tools, and go say mass.”
Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day,
and the breath of the morning blew sweetly over the
world. The Church was full of a clear and early light,
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THE I 0 U OF SLIPPY McGEE 881
the young pale gold of the new Spring sun. None of the
congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into
the sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into
St. Stanislaus’ hands the I 0 U of Slippy McGee.
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BETWEEN ▲ BUTTERFLY ’8 WINGS
T HERE was a glamour upon it. One knew it waa
going to grow into ofie of those wonderful and
shining days in whose enchanted hours any
exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that
the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of an
April day, and that it was a morning in spring when
the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in the door
of his tent.
There was in the air itself something long-missed and
come back, a heady and heart-moving delight, a promise,
a thrill, a whisper of “Aprill April /” that the Green
Things and the hosts of the Little People had heard over-
night. In the dark the sleeping souls of the golden
butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word,
and now they were out, “Little flames of God” dancing
in the Sunday sunlight. _ The Red Gulf Fritillary had
heard it, and here she was, all in her fine fulvous frock
besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the
brave beautiful Red Admiral that had dared unf riendlier
gales, trimmed his painted sails to a wind that was the
breath of spring.
Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into show-
ering sprays exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 383
what had been a blur of gray cables strong upon the
<oaks had began to bad with emerald and blossom with
amethyst — the wistaria was a-boming. And one knew
there was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was
in white, and the year’s new mintage of gold dandelions
was being coined in the fresh grass.
There wasn’t a bird that wasn’t caroling April! at
the top of his voice from the fall of his heart ; for was n’t
the world alive again, wasn’t it love-time and nest-time,
wasn’t it Springf
Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining
morning lent a light that was hope. Without knowing
it, they felt themselves a vital part of the rebdra world,
sharers in its joy because they were the children of the
common lot, the common people for whom the world is,
and without whom no world coold be. Classes, creeds,
nations, gods, all these pass and are gone; God, and the
common people, and the spring remain.
When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell
overmuch upon the sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sor-
row, the despair of death. Now that these three terrible
teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a larger
faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the
wisdom of love, and the simple truth that death is just a
passing phase of life. So I sent my workers home that
morning rejoicing with the truth, and was all the happier
and hopefuller myself because of it.
Afterwards, when C161ie was giving me my coffee and
rolls, the Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me,
a huge roll of those New York newspapers which contain
what are mistakenly known as Comic Supplements tucked
under his arm.
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He said he bought them because they “tasted like New
York” which they do not. Just as Major Cartwright
explains his purchase of them by the shameless assertion
that it just tickles him to death “to see what Godforsaken
id jits those Yankees can make of themselves when they
half-way try. Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday
newspapers ought to prove to any right thinkm* man
that it ’s safer an’ saner to die in South Carolina than
to live in New York!”
1 think the Butterfly Man and Major Cartwright buy
those papers because they think they are funny! After
they have read and sniggered, they donate them to Clelie
and Daddy January. And presently Clelie distributes
them to a waiting colored countryside, which wallpapers
its houses with them. I have had to counsel the erring
and bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle
eyes of inhuman creations whose unholy capers have
made futile many a prayer. And yet the Butterfly Man
likes them ! Is it not to wonder?
He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled
slyly to see me eye them askance.
“Did you know,” said he, over his coffee, “that Lau-
rence came in this morning on the six-o’clock? January
had him out in the garden showing off the judge’s new
patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church and
shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to
keep from shouting that all ’s right with the world, and
all he had to do was to be glad. I didn’t know how
much I cared for that boy until this morning. Parson,
it ’s a — a terrible thing to love people, when you come
to think about it, isn’t it? I told him you were honing
to see him : and that we ’d be looking for him along about
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 885
eleven. And I intimated that if he did n’t show up then
I ’d go after him with a gun. He said he ’d be here on
the stroke.” After a moment, he added gently: “I
figured they ’d be here by then — Madame and Mary
Virginia.”
“"What! You have induced Laurence to come while
she is here — without giving him any intimation that' he
is likely to meet her?” I said, aghast. “You are a bold
man, John Flint ! ”
The study windows were open and the sweet wind and
the warm sun poured in unchecked. The stir of bees,
the scent of honey-locust just opening, drifted in, and
the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and lilts and
fiutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops. We
could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and
mothers shepherding little flocks of children in their
Sunday best, trotting along with demure Sabbath faces
on their way to church. The Butterfly Man looked out,
waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a
joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, fol-
lowed the flight of a tanager’s sober spouse, and sniffed
the air luxuriously.
“Oh, somebody ’s got to stage-manage, parson,” he
said at last, lightly enough, but with a hint of tiredness
in his eyes. “And then vanish behind the scenes, leav-
ing the hero and heroine in the middle of the spotlight,
with the orchestra tuning up ‘The Voice thstt Breathed
o’er Eden,’ ” he finished, without a trace of bitterness.
“So I sent Madame a note by a little nigger newsie.”
His eyes crinkled, and he quoted the favorite aphorism
of the colored people, when they seem to exercise a me-
ticulous care: “Brer Rabbit say, ‘I trus’ no mistake.’ ”
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“You are a bold man,” said I again, with a respect
that made him laugh. Then we went over to his rooms
to wait, and while we waited I tried to read a chapter
of a book I was anxious to finish, but couldn’t, my eyes
being tempted by the greener and fresher page opening
before them. Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read
his papers.
Presently he laid his finger upon a paragraph and
handed me the paper. . . . And I read where one
“Spike” Frazer had been shot to death in a hand-to-
hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive sus-
pected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long
wanted and at last cornered, Frazer had fought tiger-
ishly and died in his tracks, preferring death to capture.
A sly and secretive creature, he had had a checkered
career in the depths. It was his one boast that more than
anybody else he had known and been a sort of protege
of the once notorious Slippy McGee, that King of Crooks
whose body had been found in the East River some years
since, and whose daring and mysterious exploits were not
yet altogether forgotten by the police or the underworld.
“Sic transit gloria mundil” said the Butterfly Man
in his gentle voice, and looked out over the peaceful gar-
den and the Sunday calm with inscrutable eyes. I re-
turned the paper with a hand that shook. It seemed to
me that a deep and solemn' hush fell for a moment upon
tiie glory of the day, while the specter of what might
have been gibbered at us for the last time.
Out of the heart of that hush walked two women — one
little and rosy and white-haired, one tall and pale and
beautiful with the beauty upon which sorrow has placed
its haunting imprint. Her black hair framed her face as
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 387
*
in ebony, and her bine, blue eyes were shadowed. By an
odd coincidence she was dressed this morning just as she
had been when the Butterfly Man first saw her— in white,
and over it a scarlet jacket. Kerry and little Pitache
rose, met them at the gate, and escorted them with grave
politeness. The Butterfly Man hastily emptied his pipe
and laid aside his newspapers.
“Your note said we were to come, that everything was
all right,” said my mother, looking up at him with bright
and trustful eyes. “Such a relief! Because I know
you never say anything you don’t mean, John.”
He smiled, and with a wave of the hand beckoned us
into the workroom. Madame followed him eagerly and
expectantly — she knew her John Flint. Mary Virginia
came listlessly, dragging her feet, her eyes somber in a
smileless face. She could not so quickly make herself
hope, she who had journeyed so far into the arid country
of despair. But he, with something tender and proud
and joyful in his looks, took her unresisting hand and
drew her forward.
“Mary Virginia!” I had not known how rich and
deep the Butterfly Man’s voice could be. “Mary Vir-
ginia, we promised you last night that if you would
trust us, the Padre and me, we ’d And the right way out,
didn’t wet Now this is what happened: the Padre
took his troubles to the Lord, and the Lord presently sent
him back to me — with the beginning of the answer in
his hand! And here’s the whole answer, Mary Vir-
ginia.” And he placed in her hand the package of
letters that meant so much to her.
My mother gave a little scream. “Armand!” she
said, fearfully. “She has told me alL Mon Dieu, how
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have you two managed this, between midnight and morn-
ing ! My son, you are a De Ranee : look me in the eyes
and tell me there is nothing wrong, that there will be no
ill consequences — ”
“There won’t be any comebacks,” said John Flint,
with engaging confidence. “As for you, Mary Virginia,
you don’t have to worry for one minute about what those
fellows can do — because they can’t do anything.
They ’re double-crossed. Now listen: when you see
Hunter, you are to say to him, ‘ Thank you for returning
my letters .’ Just that and no more. If there ’s any
questioning, stare. Stare hard. If there ’s any threat-
ening about your father, smile. You can afford to smile.
They can’t touch him. But how those letters came into
your hands you are never to tell, you understand! They
did come and that ’s all that interests you.” He began
to laugh, softly. “All Hunter will want to know is that
you ’ve received them. He ’s too game not to lose with-
out noise, and he 11 make Inglesby swallow his dose with-
out squealing, too. So — you ’re finished and done with
Mr. Hunter and Mr. Inglesby!” His voice deepened
again, as he added gently: “It was just a bad dream,
dear girl. It ’s gone with the night. Now it ’s morn-
ing, and you ’re awake.”
But Mary Virginia, white as wax, stared at the letters
in her hand, and then at me, and trembled. ,
“Trust us, my child,” said I, somewhat troubled.
“And obey John Flint implicitly. Do just what he tells
you to do, say just what he tells you to say.”
Mary Virginia looked from one to the other, thrust
the package upon me, walked swiftly up to him, and, lay-
ing her hands upon his arms stared with passionate ear-
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS 889
neatness into his face : the kind, wise, lovable face that
every child in Appleboro County adores, every woman
trusts, every man respects. Her eyes clung to his, and
he met that searching gaze without faltering, though it
seemed to probe for the root of his soul. It was well for
Mary Virginia that those brave eyes had caught some-
thing from the great faces that hung upon his walls
and kept company and counsel with him day and night, '
they that conquered life and death and turned defeat
inta victory because they had first conquered themselves!
“Yes!” said she, with a deep sigh of relief. “I trust
you ! Thank God for just how much I can believe and
trust you!”
I think that meeting face to face that luminous and
unfaltering regard, Mary Virginia must have divined
that which had heretofore been hidden from her by the
man’s invincible modesty and reserve; and being most
generous and of a large and loving soul herself, I think
she realized to the uttermost the magnitude of his gift.
Her name, her secure position, her happiness, the hopes
that the coming years were to transform into realities
— oh, I like to think that Mary Virginia saw all this,
in one of those lightning-flashes of spiritual insight that
reveal more than all one’s slower years; I like to think
she saw it given her freely, nobly, with joy, a glorious
love-gift from the limping man into whose empty hand
she had one day put a little gray underwing !
I glanced at my mother, and saw by her most ex-
pressive face that she knew and understood. She had
known and understood, long before any of us.
“If I might offer a suggestion,” I said in as mat-
ter-of-fact a voice as I could command, “it would be.
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that the sooner those letters are destr oy ed, the better.”
Mary Virginia took them from me and dropped them,
on the eoals remaining from last night's fire — the last
fire of the s eas o n They did not ignite qoiekly, though
they began to torn brown, and thin spirals of smoke arose
from them. The Butterfly Man knelt, thrust a handful
of lightwood splinters under the pile, and touched a.
match here and there. When the resinous wood flared
up, the letters blazed with h. They Mazed and then
they crumbled ; they disappeared in bits of charred and
Mack paper that vanished at a touch; they were gone
while we watched, the girl kneeling upon the hearthrug
with her hand on Flint’s arm, and I with my old heart
singing like a skylark in my breast, and my mother’s
mild eyes upon ns alL
Life and color and beauty flowed back into Mary'Vir-
ginia’s face and music’s self sang again in her voice.
She was like the day itself, reborn out of a dark last
night. When the last bit of blackened paper went swirl-
ing np the chimney, and the two of them had risen, the
most beautiful and expressive eyes under heaven looked
np like bine and dewy flowers into the Butterfly Man’s
face. She was too wise and too tender to try to thank
him in words, and never while they two lived would this
be again referred to so much as once by either; bat
she took his hand, palm upward, gave him one deep
long upward glance, and then bent her beautiful head
and dropped into the center of his palm a kiss, and closed
the fingers gently over it for everlasting keeping and
remembrance. Hie eyes brimmed over then, and two
large team fell upon his hand and washed her kiss in,
indelibly.
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None of ns four had the power of speech left ns.
Heaven knows what we should have done, if Laurence
hadn’t opened the door at that moment and walked in
upon us. I don’t think he altogether sensed the tense-
ness of the situation which his coming relieved, but he
went pale at sight of Mary Virginia, and he would have
left incontinently if my mother, with a joyous shriek,
had n’t pounced upon him.
“Laurence ! Why, Laurence 1 But we did n’t expect
you home until to-morrow night!” said die, kissing him
motherly. “My dear, dear boy, how glad I am to see
you! What happy wind blew you home to-day, Lau-
rence!”
“Oh, I finished my work ahead of schedule and got
away just as soon as I could,” Laurence briefly and
modestly explained thus that he had won his case. He
edged toward the door, avoiding Mary Virginia’s eyes.
He had bowed to her with formal politeness. He won-
dered at the usually tactful Madame ’s open effort to
detain him. It was a little too much to expect of him!
“I just ran in to see how you all were,” he tried to
be very casuaL “See you later, Padre. ’By, p’tite
Madame. ’By, Flint.” He bowed again to Mary Vir-
ginia, whose color had altogether left her, and who stood
there most palpably nervous and distressed.
“Laurence!” The Butterfly Man spoke abruptly.
“Laurence, if a chap was dying of thirst and the water
of life was offered him, he ’d be considerable of a fool
to turn his head aside and refuse to see it, wouldn’t
he!”
Laurence paused. Something in the Butterfly Man’s
face, something in mine and Madame ’s, but, above all,
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something in Mary Virginia’s, arrested him. He stood
wavering, and my mother released his arm.
“I take it,” said John Flint, boldly plunging to the
very heart of the matter, “I take it, Laurenee, that yon
still care a very great deal for this dear girl of oars?”
And now he had taken her hand in his and held it com-
fortingly. “More, say, than yon coaid ever care for
anybody else, if yon lived to rival Methosaleh? So
much, Laurence, that not to be able to believe she cares
the same way for yon takes the core out of life?” His
manner was simple and direct, and so kind that one could
only answer him in a like spirit. Besides, Laurence
loved the Butterfly Man even as Jonathan loved David.
“Yes,” said the boy honestly, “I still care for her —
like that. I always did. I always will. She knows.”
But his voice was toneless.
“Of course you do, kid brother,” said Flint affec-
tionately. “Don’t you suppose I know? But it ’s just
as well for you to say it out loud every now and then.
Fresh air is good for everything, particularly feelings.
Keeps ’em fresh and healthy. Now, Mary Virginia, you
feel just the same way about Laurence, don’t you?”
And he added: “Don’t be ashamed to tell the most
beautiful truth in the world, my dear. Well?”
She went red and white. She looked entreatingly into
the Butterfly Man’s face. She didn’t exactly see why
he should drive her thus, but she caught courage from
his. One saw how wise Flint had been to have snared
Laurence here just now. One moment she hesitated.
Then:
“Yes!” said she, and her head went up proudly.
“Yes, oh, yes, I care — like that. Only much, much more !
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I shall always care like that, although he probably won’t
believe me now when I say so. And I can’t blame him
for doubting me.”
“But it just happens that I have never been able to
make myself doubt you,” said Laurence gravely.
“Why, Mary Virginia, you are you.”
“Then, Laurence,” said the Butterfly Man, quickly,
“will you take your old friends’ word for it — mine, Ma-
dame ’s, the Padre’s — that you were most divinely right
to go on believing in her and loving her, because she
never for one moment ceased to be worthy of faith and
affection? No, not for one moment! She couldn’t, you
know. She ’s Mary Virginia ! And will you promise
to listen with all your patience to what she may think
best to tell you presently — and then forget it? You ’re
big enough to do that ! She ’s been in sore straits, and
she needs all the love you have, to help make up to her.
Can she be sure of it, Laurence?”
Laurence flushed. He looked at his old friend with
reproach in his fine brown eyes. “You have known me
all my life, all of you,” said he, stiffly, “Have I ever
given any of you any reason to doubt me?”
“No, and we don’t. Not one of us. But it ’s good
for your spul to say things out loud,” said Flint com-
fortably. “And now you ’ve said it, don’t you think
you two had better go on over to the Parish House par-
lor, which is a nice quiet place, and talk this whole busi-
ness over and out — together?”
Laurence looked at Mary Virginia and what he saw
electrified him. Boyishness flooded him, youth danced
in his eyes, beauty was upon him, like sunlight.
“Mary Virginia!” said the boy lover to the girl sweet-
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heart, “is it reaHy sot I was really right to believe all
along that you — care 1 ’ ’
“Laurence, Laurence!" she was half-crying. “Oh,
Laurence, are you sure you care — yet? You are sure,
Laurence! You are turef Because — I — I don’t think
I could stand things now if — if I were mistaken — ”
I don’t know whether the boy ran to the girl at that,
or the girl to the boy. I rather think they ran to each
other because, in another moment, perfectly regardless
of us, they were clinging to each other, and my mother
was walking around them and crying heartily and shame-
lessly, and enjoying herself immensely. Mary Virginia
began to stammer:
“Laurence, if you only knew — Laurenee, if it wasn’t
for John Flint — and the Padre — ” The two of them had
the two of us, each by an arm; and the Butterfly Man
Was brick-red and furiously embarrassed, he having a
holy horror of being held up and thanked.
“'Why, I did what I did,’’ said he, uncomfortably.
“But,”— he brightened visibly— “if you wiU have the
truth, have it. If it wasn’t for this blessed brick of a
parson I ’d never have been in a position to do anything
for anybody. Don’t you forget that!”
“What ridiculous nonsense the man talks!” said I,
exasperated by this shameless casuistry. “John Flint
raves. As for me — ”
“As for you,” said he with deep reproach, “you ought
to know better than to tell such a thumping lie at this
time of your life. I ’m ashamed of you, parson! Why,
you know good and well — ”
“Why, John Flint, you — ” I began, aghast.
My mother began to laugh. “For heaven’s sake,
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 395
thank them bo^h and have done with it!” said she, a bit
hysterically. “God alone knows how they managed, but
this thing lies between them, the two great geese. Did
one ever hear the like?”
“Madame is right, as always,” said Laurence gravely.
“Remember, I don’t know anything yet, except that
somehow you ’ve brought Mary Virginia and me back to
each other. That ’s enough for me. I have n’t got any
questions to ask.” His voice faltered, and he gripped
us by the hand in. turn, with a force that made me, for
one, wince and cringe. “And Padre — Bughunter, you
both know that I — ” he couldn’t finish.
“That we — ” choked Mary Virginia.
“Sure we know,” said the Butterfly Man hastily.
“Don’t you know you ’re our kids and we ’ve got to
know?” He began to edge them towards the door. I
think his courage was getting a little raw about the
comers. “Yes, you two go on over to the Parish House
parlor, where you ’ll have a chance to talk without being
interrupted— Madame will see to that — and don’t you
show your noses outside of that room until everything ’s
settled the one and only way everything ought to be
settled.” His eyes twinkled as he manceuvered them
outside, and then stood in the doorway to watch them
walk away — beautiful, youthful, radiantly happy, and
very close together, the girl’s head just on the level of
the boy’s shoulder. He was still faintly smiling when
he came back to us; if there was pain behind that smile,
he concealed it. My mother ran to him, impulsively.
“John Flint!” said she, profoundly moved and
earnest. “John Flint, the good God never gave me but
one child, though I prayed for more. Often and often
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hare I envied her silly mother Mary Virginia. But now.
John, I know that if I could have had another child
that, after Armand, I ’d love best and respect most and
be proudest of pi this world, it would be you. Yes, you.
John Flint, you are the best man, and the bravest and
truest and most unselfish, and the finest gentleman, out-
side of my husband and my son, that I have ever known.
What makes it. all the more wonderful is that you ’re
a genius along with it. I am proud of you, and glad of
you, and I admire and love you with all my heart. And
I really wish you ’d call me mother. You should have
been bom a De Ranc6!”
This, from my mother! I was amazed. Why, she
would think she was flattering one of the seraphim if
she had said to him, “You might have been a De Ranee!”
“Madame!” stammered Flint, “why, Madame!”
“Oh, well, never mind, then. Let it go at Madame,
since it would embarrass you to change. But I look upon
you as my son, none the less. I claim you from this
hour,” said she firmly, as one not to be gainsaid.
“I ’m beginning to believe in. fairy-stories,” said
Flint. “The beggar comes home — and he isn’t a beg-
gar at all, he ’s a Prince. Because the Queen is his
mother.”
My mother looked at him approvingly. The grace of
his manner, and the unaffected feeling of his words,
pleased her. But she said no more of what was in her
heart for him. She fell back, as women do, upon the
safe -subject of housekeeping matters.
“I suppose,” she mused, “that those children will
remain with us to-day 1 Yes, of course. Armand, we
shall have the last of your great-grandfather’s wine.
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 397
And I am going to send over for the judge. Let me see :
shall I have time for a cake with frosting ? H’m ! Yes,
I think so. Or would you prefer wine jelly with
whipped cream, John!”
He considered gravely, one hand on his hip, the other
stroking his beard.
“Couldn’t we have both?” he wondered hopefully.
“Please! Just for this once?”
“We could! We shall!” said my mother, grandly,
recklessly, extravagantly. “Adieu, then, children of my
heart! I go to confer with C 161 ie.” She waved her
hand and was gone.
The place shimmered with sun. Old Kerry lay with
his head between his paws and dozed and dreamed in it,
every now and then opening his hazel eyes to make sure
that all was well with his man. All outdoors was one
glory of renewing life, of stir and growth, of loving and
sin g in g and nest-building, and the budding of new green
leaves and the blossoming of April boughs. Just such
April hopes were theirs who had found each other again
this morning. All of life at its best and fairest stretched
sunnily before those two, the fairer for the cloud that
had for a time darkened it, the dearer and diviner for
the loss that had been so imminent.
. . . That was a redbird again. And now a vireo.
And this the mockingbird, love-drunk, emptying his
heart of a troubadour in a song of fire and dew. And
on a vagrant air, a gipsy air, the scent of the honey-
locust. The spring for all the world else. But for him
I loved, — what?
I suppose my wistful eyes betrayed me, for used to
the changing expressions of my thin visage, he smiled;
\
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pm, it toot pomSUt ya’fce m mtf
Hmrrj it* met Why, mo, f'lir!”
nht be had to bald to* to flaw, jol And the
trwe toe of the tor, which to aO any ma^fkiptfir
child’s earf, and aragdoO in her gore; aad Mrapd^i
khs on the paha and a tear to hallow it. Bat I who had
greatly breed aad era am gre at ly tot aad offered,
wasitnot formed aO sea to know and to nadentandf
“Bat I hare got toe thing itaetf,” said toe Batterfty
Man, “that aakes twyliiap da worth while. Why,
I hare bea taught hoa to lore! My week m big — hat
by itself it was n’t enoegh for me. I needed aamtoiag
So T was -rwept aad e apty aad ready and waifc-
Now had a’t there got to be aooe-
thing fine and decent in me, when it was she alone oat
. I was w ai t in g for and eonld lorel”
' y<a». ' oh, wy son, Hyson!”
“Ob, was bad and hitle r enoa g h at first, per—
Beea os f I wanted her eo nroeh! Great God, I war toe
a sonl in bell After awhile I crawled oat of heD —
knees. But I ’d begun to nndentand
things. I VI been tsnght It ’d bea burnt into ne
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 399
past forgetting. Maybe that ’s what hell is for, if folks
only knew it. Could anything ever happen to anybody
any more that I could n’t understand and be sorry for,
I wonder?
“No, don’t you worry any about me. I wouldn’t
change places with anybody alive, I ’m too glad for ev-
erything that ’s ever happened to me, good and bad.
I ’m not ashamed of the beginning, no, nor I ’m not
afnpd of the end.
“Will you believe me, though, when I tell you what
worried me like the mischief for awhile? Family, par-
son! You can’t live in South Carolina without having
the seven-years’ Family-itch wished on you, you know.
I felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all
by myself among a lot of proper garden plants — until
I got fed up on the professional Descendant banking on
his boneyard full of dead ones; then I quit worrying.
I ’m Me and alive — Mid I should worry about ancestors !
Come to think about it, everybody ’s an ancestor while
you wait. ^1 made up my mind I ’d be my own ancestor
_and my own descendant — and make a good job of both
while I was at it.”
But I was too sad to smile. And after awhile he
asked gently:
“Are you grieving because you think I ’ve lost love?
Parson, did you ever know something you didn’t know
how you knew, but you know you know it because it ’s
true? Well then — I know that girl ’s mine and I came
here to find her, though on the face of it you ’d think
I ’d lost her, wouldn’t you? Somewhere and sometime
1 11 come again — and when I do, die 11 know me.”
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400
SLIPPY McGEE
And to save my life I couldn’t tell him I didn’t be-
lieve it! His maimer even more than his words im-
pressed me. He didn’t look improbable.
“One little life and one little death,” said the Butter-
fly Man, “couldn’t possibly be big enough for some-
thing like this to get away from a man forever. I have
got the thing too big for a dozen lives to hold. Isn’t
that a great deal for a man to have, parson t”
“Yes.” said I. “It is a great deal for a man to
have.” But I foresaw the empty, empty places, in the
long, long years ahead. I added faintly: “Having that
much, you have more than most.”
“You only have what you are big enough not to take,”
said he. “And I ’m not fooling myself I shan’t be lone-
some and come some rough tumbles at times. The differ-
ence is, that if I go down now I won’t stay down. If
there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be
— kids. I ’d like kids. My own kids. And I shall never
have any. It — well, it just would n’t be fair to the kids.
Louisa ’ll come nearest to being mine by bomation —
though I ’m thinking she ’s managed to wish me every-
body else’s, on her curl.”
“So! You are your own ancestor and your own
descendant, and everybody’s kids are yours! You are
modest, heint And what else have you got?”
His eyes suddenly danced. “Nothing but the rest of
the United States,” said the Butterfly Man, mag-
nificently. And when I stared, he laughed at me.
“ It ’s quite true, parson : I have got the whole United
States to work for. Uncle Sam. U. S. Usl I ’ve been
drafted into the Brigade that hasn’t any commander,
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 401
nor any colors, nor honors, nor even a name; but that ’s
never going to be mustered out of service, because we
that enlist and belong can’t and won’t quit.
“ Parson, think of me representing the Brigade down
here on the Carolina coast, keeping up the work, fighting
things that hurt and finding out things that help!
Lord, what a chance ! A hundred millions to work for,
a hundred millions of one’s own people — and a trail to
blaze for the unborn millions to cornel” His glance"
kindled, his face was like a lighted lamp. The vision
was upon him, standing there in the April sunlight,
staring wide-eyed into the future.
Its reflected light illumined i r», too — a little. And
1 saw that in a very large and s^iandid sense, this was
the true American. He stood almost symbolically for
that for which America stands — the fighting chance to
overcome and to grow, the square deal, the spirit that
looks eagle-eyed and unafraid into the sunrise. And
above all for unselfish service and unshakable faith, and
a love larger than personal love, prouder than personal
pride, higher than personal ambition. They do not know
America who do not know and will not see this spirit in
her, going its noble and noiseless way apart/
“The whole world to work for, and a whole lifetime
to do it in!” said the voice of America, exultant. “Lord
God, that ’s a man-sized job, but You just give me hands
and eyes and time, and I ’ll do the best I can. You ’ve
done Your part by me — stand by, and I ’ll do mine by
You!”
Are those curious coincidences, those circumstances
which occur at such opportune moments that they leave
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40*
SLIPPY McGEE
\
one with a sense of a guiding finger behind the affairs of
men — are they, after all, only fortuitous accidents, or
have they a deeper and a diviner significance f
There stood the long worktable, with orderly piles of
work on it ; the microscope in its place ; the books he had
opened and pushed aside last night ; and some half-dozen
small card-board boxes in a row, containing the chrys-
alids he had been experimenting with, trying the effect
of cold upon color. The cover of one box had been
partially pushed off, possibly when he had moved the
books. And while we had been paying attention to other
things, one of these chrysalids had been paying strict
attention to its own business, the beautiful and important
business of becoming a butterfly. Flint discovered it
first, and gave a pleased exclamation.
“Look! Look! A Turnus, father! The first Tur-
nus of the year!"
The insect had been out for an hour or two, but was
not yet quite ready to fly. It had crawled out of the
half-opened box, dragged its wormy length across the
table, over intervening obstacles, seeking some place to
climb up and cling to.
Now the Butterfly Man had left the Bible open, merely
shoving it aside without shutting it, when he had found
no comfort for himself last night in what John had to
say. Protected by piled-up books and propped almost
upright by the large inkstand, it gave the holding-place
the insect desired. The butterfly had walked up the
page and now clung to the top.
There she rested, her black-and-yellow body quivering
like a tiny live dynamo from the strong force of circula-
tion, that was sending vital fluids upward into the wings
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 403
to give them power and expansion. We had seen the
same thing a thousand and one times before, we should
see it a thousand and one times again. But I do not
think either of us could ever forego the delight of watch-
ing a butterfly’s wings shaping themselves for flight, and
growing into something of beauty and of wonder. The
lovely miracle is ever new to us.
She was a big butterfly, big even for the greatest of
Carolina swallow-tails ; not the dark dimorphic form, but
the true Tiger Turnus itself, her barred yellow upper
wings edged with black enamel indented with red gold,
her tailed lower wings bordered with a wider band of
black, and this not only set with lunettes of gold but with
purple amethysts, and a ruby on the upper and lower
edges. Her wings moved rhythmically; a constant quiv-
ering agitated her, and her antennae with their flattened
clubs seemed to be sending and receiving wireless mes-
sages from the shining world outside.
And as the wings had dried and grown firmer in the
mild warm current of air and the bright sunlight, she
moved them with a wider and bolder sweep. The heavy,
unwieldy body, thinned by the expulsion of those cur-
rents driven upward to give flying-power to the wings,
had taken on a slim and tapering grace. She had
reached her fairy perfection. She was ready now for
flight and light and love and freedom and the uncharted
pathways of the air, ready to carry out the design of
the Creator who had fashioned her so wondrously and so
beautiful, and had sent ahead of her the flowers for that
marvelous tongue of hers to sip.
Waiting still, opening and closing her exquisite wings,
trying them, spreading them flat, the splendid swallow-
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404
SLIPPY McGEE
tail clang to the page of the book open at the Gospel of
John. And I, idly enough, leaned forward, and saw be-
tween the opening and the closing wings, words. The
which John Flint, bending forward beside me, likewise
saw. “Work,” flashed out. And on a lower line,
“while it is day.”
I grasped the edge of the table; his knuckles showed
white beside mine.
M I must work the, works of him
that sent me, while it is day.”
His eyes grew larger and deeper. A sort of inward
light, a serene and joyous acceptance and assurance,
flowed into them. I that had dared to be despondent
felt a sense of awe. The Voice that had once spoken
above the Mercy Seat and between the wings of the
cherubim was speaking now in immortal words between
the wings of a butterfly.
She was poising herself for her first flight, the bright
and lovely Lady of the Sky. Now she spread her wings
flat, as a fan is unfurled. And now she had lifted them
clear and uncovered her message. The Butterfly Man
watched her, hanging absorbed upon her every movement.
And he read, softly:
"I must work
• • , t chile it U day ”
Lightly as a flower, a living and glorious flower, she
lifted and launched herself into the air, flew straight and
sure for the outside light, hung poised one gracious mo-
ment, and was gone.
He turned to me the sweetest, dearest eyes I have ever
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BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY’S WINGS 405
seen in a mortal countenance, the eyes of a little child.
His face had caught a sort of secret beauty, that was
never to leave it any more.
“Parson!” said the Butterfly Man, in a whisper that
shook with the beating of his heart behind it: “Parson !
Don’t it beat heillt”
I rocked on my toes. Then I flung my arms around
him, with a jubilant shout :
“It does! It does! Oh, Butterfly Man, by the grace
and the glory and the wonder of God, it beats hell!”
/
TEE END
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